Devil on the Isle of Dogs
by Cardboard Tube Knight
Summary: Dead men walk the streets of Canary Warf and the FBI intrudes into Molly Hooper's Morgue; Molly is forced to enlist Sherlock's help to confront the occult, Moriarty, and matters of a checkered past that even the great detective couldn't have deduced.
1. In Which Molly Makes an Unlikely Call

The Devil on the Isle of Dogs

Chapter One

**Author's Note: **_This is a bit of a different thing for me since I started back with fan fiction. The characters of Lewis and Holly are mine and they're pretty well established and developed elsewhere. For those who don't know a diener is a person who works in a morgue. This all takes place sometime after the show's first season._

The pitter patter of the rain against the windows of the morgue wasn't ample distraction from her thoughts. Molly raked her trembling pale fingers back through her unkempt brown hair and tapped her feet, paced the floor, did anything to take her mind off the anticipation. Odd enough, she felt no fear from the impossible man that lay on her examination table.

Sherlock was coming and she had actually rang him herself. Something that she'd never done before. It was too much for her to even think about initiating conversation with him most days.

But he needed to see this. More than anyone else in the world he needed to see what she had here. A true mystery and one that she felt only he could solve. Despite her nervousness and unbearable need to have him notice her, she knew this was something grander.

And she wanted to find out what this was.

Molly smoothed her skirt down. Why had she bothered to wear a skirt today? Her legs were simply too skinny and he might notice or even make some comment. That's what Sherlock did, he noticed things and he commented on things and he turned her into a little mouse. Without having arrived yet he'd already reduced her to acting like a stupid little girl in sixth form.

She hated herself for it.

The victim of this killing, however he had died, was all wrong. Molly concentrated on the little that she knew about this man to get her mind off of Sherlock. She hadn't gotten past the Y-Incision and opening him up. He had died mere hours ago and maybe there had been some extenuating circumstances that explained the state of his skin and hair. But inside he was rotten, a rolling, terrible funk wafting up from his opened up carcass.

In an attempt to combat the smell she tossed an body bag over him and threw open all the windows. It had done a fair bit, but it wasn't enough. Molly took to residing on the other side of the room while she waited for…

"Sherlock…" she looked up when he came through the door the light sparkle of rain drops in his dark, thick curls. "Sorry if I disturbed something," his face was plain for a moment as if he were searching for something in her, looking at even the un-seeable.

"I was having a go at the violin," he smiled and obviously fake, light smile. "I didn't expect you to call, Lestrade lost his mobile?" he asked as he stripped out of his gloves and came to a pause near the middle of the room.

"No I—"

She was cut short as he spun and sniffed at the air sharply, his face crinkling with disgust. "The body over there is possibly two weeks old," he pointed. "You're usually more thorough than _that,_" he crossed the room toward the body. "This one was just found, no…the time of death, this man died just _twelve hours ago?_" he mused as he neared the table.

"It's why I called," Molly said nearing the table again and forced a half smile. Sherlock tore back the covering to reveal the splayed open form, its insides blacked and rotting. He drew back, as if the sheer power of the odor were too much for even him.

"He was a day trader, very posh, well manicured and a smoker by the looks of it," Sherlock studied the corpse's hand and looked around his face, his neck, his ears, tracing a path back up his arm in the process.

Molly nodded. "They brought him in a few hours ago and he looked fine then…there was a backlog and I couldn't…I couldn't get to him right away and by the time I did—"

"He had looked like this?" Sherlock said. "You did the right thing calling me."

And then he touched her, he honestly placed a hand on her shoulder and she could have sworn he squeezed it tenderly.

"Aren't there…chemicals that could cause this kind of thing, rapid decomposition?" Molly said trying to shake the sensation of her stomach doing cartwheels. She knew the truth of it but she felt the need to keep saying something, saying anything. She couldn't believe that she was speaking with Sherlock Holmes alone for this long.

"Chemicals? No…not to this degree."

"Then what…?"

Holmes was concentrating on the body for some time and it was as if he forgot to answer her question. "I don't know yet, I'm working through it…but some quiet would be nice," he said drawing his hand back from her arm. It was more like a warning than a personable suggestion.

And it was too good to last. Molly couldn't have expected to have him be nice to her for too long. He never seemed nice to anyone when it came to long term communication and when she thought about it, this felt good. She was fitting in with the other people in his life, what few there were, and he was interacting with her. She stepped back to watch him and as soon as she wasn't talking it was like he had forgotten her presence in the room. He muttered to himself in short phrases and leaned against various things between bouts of digging at the body of the deceased. As she stood at the other end of the lab she stopped wondering how a decomposing man had been walking around a few hours prior and started staring at Sherlock's lips, at the coil of curls sticking out over her forehead.

His lips parted and he spoke. "A yellow granulated substance is on some parts of the body, sulfur…"

"Wait...where?" Molly rushed over, adjusting her hair and stepping in next to Sherlock. For a split second she searched for the crystals of sulfur on the skin but then she noticed that she and Sherlock were pressed together at the side. His leg gliding lightly against hers. "I…see," she managed.

"The victim obviously worked in a production plant of some kind. There are at least two plants that produce Sulfuric acid in this area; we should just cross reference his name with any names on the list of workers in those places. Of course he could work in a fertilizer plant too…or a pesticide or herbicide one…but he's too posh for that…"

"Why are you trying to find where he worked? And did you say we?"

"Because when we find where he worked, we're going to be able to find out who he was and how he got like this. And yes, I did say we…Watson, despite my wishes, is out of town with Sarah," Sherlock said with an aura of disgust in his tone.

"I like Sarah, she's sweet," Molly said before she could stop herself.

A snort escape Sherlock, he was looking down at his cell phone now. His eyes flicked side to side as he scanned some web page or saved document. Molly craned her neck to try and get a better look but she couldn't. There was a long silence and he wrapped away on the touch screen for a moment and then suddenly locked the screen and slipped the phone back into his pocket. "May I borrow you Mobile?" he asked.

"Well…sure," Molly handed hers over, blushing when she realized how embarrassing it must be. It was a small touch screen thing with a snap on case that she'd had made with Toby, her cat on it, the background was also a picture of Toby and herself. Her arm outstretched to get them both in the shot. She waited for the inevitable comment about the picture, even if it was something about the impracticality of the angle or lighting, but it never came.

Sherlock spoke again. "I needed yours, there's always the chance that my number could be recognized, but I just wanted to see something," he said

"Who are you texting?" she asked.

He never answered her. When he tossed the phone back to her it almost fell and by the time she looked at it the only thing on screen was a picture of a waste bin with the words _messages deleted_ flashing next to it.

"I don't understand…why did you do that?" asked Molly.

"Didn't want you reading it."

"But it's my phone," she quipped.

Sherlock made little acknowledgement of her last statement. "Seven PM sound good?" he asked. "Yes that should be enough time, be at my flat by seven PM and we'll start from there—" he was breaking for the doors already, slipping back into his gloves as his heels clicked at the tile floor.

"Time for what? Why do you need me at seven?"

"We're going to conduct an investigation, bring your things," he said and then he was gone out of the door with a soft rustling sound. Molly stood in the room with the fresh rotting corpse, unable to smell the stench of death or hear the pitter patter of the rain all because Sherlock Holmes had waltzed into her mortuary and noticed her, spoken to her and even asked her, specifically to help him.

She didn't know how long she stood there with a dumb smile on her face.

* * *

><p>It was a little after nine AM central standard time, locally it was just past three in the afternoon. Lewis had never been one to get used to the jet lag quickly and it was no puddle hop from Texas to the United Kingdom. But at least the flight had been excessively short. There was an aura of urgency with this case, he had been lucky to come across the small, subtle clues in the paper when they were mentioned<p>

The electrical storms coupled some of the crime in the city had tipped him off. It was a subtle science and he admitted it was mostly luck. Until he received the call that something was being delivered to a Hospital in London that he needed to see. He wasn't given any information on how the caller came about this or who the caller was, but he chased the lead further.

Local time was three thirty when their taxi pulled up in front of Saint Bart's Hospital. Lewis's expression softened as he regarded Holly, her huge green eyes were searching brick façade even before they stopped.

"Glad to be back?" he asked her.

A wry smile crept across her face and she nodded. "I'd say I'm feeling shattered more than anything else," she said.

"Must be hard to come home and feel like your time is off. All you want to do is sleep right?" he asked.

"Sleep and go by a nice authentic pub…maybe have some Sheppard's Pie or a roast with some Yorkshire Pudding…oooo or a Pork Pie…"

"You people are disgusting," Lewis said as he helped her out of the cab. "Putting fucking pork into a pie doesn't even sound edible."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Maybe it's like other things…you'll like it once you've had a taste," she said.

A short chuckle escaped Lewis. "That's not suggestive in the slightest," he said as they were going through the doors. It was drizzling, there had been a perpetual drizzle since they touched ground and Holly hadn't mentioned it. The little droplets clung to her jacket and the edges of her hair, in the florescent light of the hallways he caught a glimmer and Holly wanted to kick himself for noticing it. But that sensation soon passed and he was left with anticipation.

"Did you find out where the body was?" he asked.

"There's a mortuary a few floors up," she said pointing to a floor layout sign. It was a short journey up to the morgue and for whatever reason there was total silence in the lift. They found the room, numbered M105, halfway down a hall full of other mortuaries and labs. Before Holly could lift her had to knock Lewis went on and pushed through the door with a brazen gait as he stepped into the room.

A startled woman looked up from a bowl of pot noodles. "Oh, I wasn't expecting—may I help you?" she got to her feet and wiped her hands on a napkin that sat near the edge of an empty counter top.

Lewis flipped his badge out. "It's come to our attention that you've got something of interest to my division under your care, Miss…" he said taking a pause to read her badge, "…Molly Hooper."

"Oh," she said seemingly slightly taken aback. "An American," she smiled warmly. "I'm not sure what I could have in here that the FBI would be interested in…and I've never heard of Eden division."

_She'd read the badge,_ Lewis thought, _smart girl_.

"Not many people have," Lewis said. "I'm Special Agent Lewis Reynolds and this is my partner," he regarded Holly. "Officer Holly Prescott."

Holly came forward slowly and gave a curt nod. "We're sorry if we disrupted your tea," Holly said.

A smile crept across the woman's face. "Holly and Molly that's cute. You're from around here?" she asked.

"Born in Manchester, I transferred to the US as…kind of an agent exchange program," Holly trailed off. "But would you mind if we took a look around—promise to ask before we remove anything from the lab…" Holly said.

"It seems like something is always being removed from the lab," Molly giggled nervously. "But sure, by all means have a look around. I have to be somewhere later tonight…so I might have to tell one of the ward assistances to keep close…"

Holly was always so personable; Lewis had to admit that it helped in situations like this that could have easily gone badly.

"Doctor Hooper," Lewis started. "It's a little unusual to have a diener with a Doctorate?" he asked noticing her badge.

Molly gazed down at the plastic encased badge clasped to the breast of her lab coat and smiled what would seem to be her first honest smile. "It's not required…I just…I don't really think I'm best for treatment of the living. There's no more mistakes to be made with the dead and they need someone who knows what they're doing to care for them…" she might have said more but something called her to a stop.

Lewis smiled at her. "Just something I noticed," he said strolling out a way from where she stood. "Speaking of which, have you seen anything particularly strange come through here in the last few days?"

"No," Molly said. "Nothing that would interest the FBI, anyway," she added.

"You'd be surprised what would interest the FBI," Lewis winked.

"Oh," Molly said. "Well you're welcome to a look around the place and I'll have them lock up when you're done if I'm gone," she said picking up her bowl and spoon. "Don't let me get in the way of your investigation," she was out the door and headed down the hall before Lewis could ask her for any more information.

"That woman knows something, she might not know something relevant but something interesting definitely crossed her path…" Lewis said.

"Why did you flirt with her so shamelessly, the poor thing, you should be ashamed of yourself," Holly said.

Lewis rolled his eyes. "I didn't flirt with her, I was being nice. You're just jealous."

Holly's cheeks flashed a shade of red and she bit back something. Lewis could tell she was holding her tongue. "Help me look through these lockers, please," she said in a small submissive tone.

"I'll start down here," Lewis pointed to the far corner of the room. "You get that side."

* * *

><p>"Is that a British Browning L9A1 in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"<p>

"Both," Sherlock responded and he was aiming the gun at Jim from across the pool. Molly watched from her hiding place with Sarah, peeking up over the top of window sill. Jim was there with Sherlock and Watson and it looked as if there was a bomb strapped around Watson's body. It was hard to believe, she couldn't even bring herself to start to think it but all those bombings and there was something about Jim and the way he was speaking now. It was so unlike him, so unkind and heartless.

"Jim Moriarty," he introduced himself and the gun was still trained on him.

Sherlock's motions were different, they weren't as cool and were far less frantic and as Molly tried to piece this all together and held her breath for fear she'd be noticed she couldn't help but feel strange to see him like this. He had always been so collected and this was something that truly made him nervous. She had heard his house was partially blown up and then hours later he was in the morgue like nothing had happened.

This was different, Sherlock looked like he had been taken down some and furthermore he looked insulted by it. She had never seen the contempt in his face he was showing for Jim. And then Jim explained himself, loud and clear and Molly couldn't help but feel the wind go out of herself. This man had been in her home, played with Toby and she had even thought about letting him sleep with her and now every little time they had touched raced through her mind and she just felt tainted.

_Playing gay? Playing Jim from IT?_

Jim saw it all as a joke but it wasn't funny. He had set himself up with Molly just for this reason. Or had he? Had he spend weeks talking to her on her blog, talking to her about television shows and music and laughing with her and teaching her things? Before she realized it she was crying. Sarah was locked on the sight of Watson wrapped in the bomb and there was no way she could have noticed Molly's tears.

Molly missed much of the next part of the conversation; she was looking but couldn't process what she was seeing. But there was an audible sigh of relief in the air when Jim just seemed to let them go. He walked out of the room just like that. Sherlock rushed up to rip the bomb vest off Watson and it was flung halfway back up toward the door Jim had left out of. Both of the men were frantic, Sherlock pacing up and down, checking different areas of the pool and with Watson collapsed down onto the floor.

As the room was searched, Molly wondered if Sherlock had noticed her and Sarah.

It was unlike him to miss anything but given the high concentration a situation like this would have taken Molly would understand if he did. He was checking around the room just when she looked at Sarah and as if on cue Sarah mused. "We shouldn't let them know we saw this…" she said. Molly nodded her agreement.

The door to the pool room burst open and Sarah and Molly hunkered down as Jim walked back in the room with such a jolly gait that he might have been coming to make friends with Sherlock and John…

But there were sniper sights trained on them, maybe half a dozen and Jim was explaining himself. "You can't be allowed to continue…"

Molly didn't know what crossed her mind, the next thing she knew Sherlock was aiming his gun down at the bomb pack where Watson had thrown it off and she moved for the door. The snipers wouldn't be looking for her, wouldn't be waiting for her and if she was right the cops would be there soon, she had called them and that's how Sarah and she had found Sherlock…that's how they followed him.

Sarah was somewhere behind her, lost in her running and she knew that if she could just get there she could do something. She could stop Jim or grab him or something. She didn't know where these thoughts came from, she might never know but when she dashed out of the door behind Jim, Sherlock glanced up, his eyes locking with Jim's and then both of them turned toward her.

"Molly! How good of you to join us, you remember, Sherlock—don't you?"

She froze and Jim walked over, grabbing her at the arm and shoving her forward. She stumbled down the poolside until she was off to Sherlock's side, between him and Watson. And she could literally feel them, the little red dots from the sniper rifles zeroing in on her. Suddenly they weren't on Watson and Sherlock, they were just on her.

"You dumb bitch, you occupied your purpose already and your act is over. You should have never…been…here," Jim said.

Molly was frozen, rooted in place by the small pin points of crimson light.

"I may have my reservations about killing my little playmate and his pet here," Jim said and then he turned to Sherlock, "and believe me I do, but you can die just as easily as this, right here…" a smile crept over Jim's face and he strode forward. "No more episodes of _Glee_, no more of your pathetic attempts at a real friendship with that god-awful cat Toby, no more Molly…"

Watson was fast. He lifted his leg and kicked her in the hip, hard. She careened into Sherlock.

But something else happened. There must have been some unseen signal, some procedure that they were following to protect her. Because Sherlock took over the motion that Watson had started…_and Sherlock was faster. _

He pulled her close, hugging her tight to his person and twirling toward the pool. A gunshot went off and then three more shots closer by. _The bullets can't get them under water—Sherlock would know that, he did know that_.

Hitting the water took what seemed like an eternity and Watson was right behind them. The moment before they splashed through the surface of the pool there was a blinding flash of light. Moriarty fell back, the bullet burning against the vest he wore. It seemed that he had thought to wear this even though he didn't expect to be shot. He was planning, always planning.

The dim ambience created by the pool's soft yellow light shimmering off the surface would have been romantic if it wasn't for the situation. The water was clouded with blood and by the time they dragged Sherlock's body from the water, Jim was gone and Sarah was rushing in to help them.

A pair of bullets had hit Sherlock, one dangerously close to the heart and the other in the stomach. Her mobile was wet and she couldn't call for help and here she was holding Sherlock Holmes, who had just saved her life and now he was dying…all because she had been stupid. She knew that if he could have been more coherent he would have pointed it out. He would make some quip about her looking fatter or having a small mouth or about her 'I Love the 80's' side ponytail but he didn't.

He just lay in her arms with that glossed over look in his eyes.

* * *

><p>Molly awoke in the darkened on call room with tears in her eyes and her lunch next to her on the table. Her phone was vibrating against the wood next to her and when she looked down at the number it was Sherlock. Why was he trusting her, she had messed up before. She had almost gotten him killed and here he was bringing her along on a case?<p>

It was growing dark outside and when she read the message she couldn't believe that she was going through with this, she was going to Sherlock's flat on Baker's Street.

She threw the remainder of her food out, knowing she couldn't eat. But if she was going to go over there she had an hour to go home, change clothes, grab some things and get the Tube back to where he lived. She might as well not reek of pot noodles and dead people when she goes over there and his message had said to dress up.

**Author's Note: **_I felt it important to mention this: water does stop gunshots. Because a bullet is so hot and traveling so fast they shatter after going through so much water, though how far the go in depends on the caliber of bullet. But you can't rapidly cool something that hot and not affect it. _


	2. In Which a Dinner Party Takes Place

Chapter Two

"Sherlock Holmes, this is his, correct?" Molly asked as she looked up into the door of 221B Baker Street at the face of a prim older woman with auburn hair cropped low around the top of her head. She didn't look to be related to Sherlock, but it was possible.

The woman beamed a smile and opened the door wider. "Oh you're looking for Sherlock, how nice of him to have a lovely young woman by," the woman motioned to usher Molly in. "He's been a bit of a recluse lately, but he is such a dear most of the time…"

"Are you his mother?" Molly asked her cheeks still burning hot.

"Oh heavens no, I'm just the landlady," she said as they started up the narrow staircase that wound up into the second floor of the building. They stepped into an open parlor where Sherlock lay back on his couch, unmoving and unblinking. His pale blue eyes were locked on one spot on the ceiling and he never bothered to let on if he had noticed them.

"Sherlock, this young woman has come to see you," said the landlady.

"Molly is welcome to come in. Thank you Miss Hudson," Sherlock said and there was a hint of warmth in his voice. He sounded almost personable.

Miss Hudson quickly left, muttering to herself about the state of the place as she went and Molly was alone with Sherlock in the drawing room of his flat. She let out a short nervous giggle and writhed her fingers together. "I like…what you've done with the place," Molly quipped finally.

The flat certainly was interesting, from the stacks of books residing on nearly every flat surface to the chemistry set occupying the counter space in the kitchen. The place didn't seem particularly dirty but there was so much clutter and one of it seemed to hold any kind of organization that she could see…Molly imagined that it must have been much like his mind.

"Let's get something straight," Sherlock started just as he was sitting up onto the couch. "Don't you ever think that you can lie to me…"

"I didn't. I was just…making conversation," Molly said aiming her eyes down at the floor.

Holmes's eyes flicked up and down over her rapidly and in an instant he was talking. "You were told to dress nice, yet you come to me ten minutes before we're required to leave dressed like that. Though I'm glad you bothered to remove your ponytail," he bounded off of the couch and moved toward her. Molly froze as he approached.

His fingers slipped back into her hair and he was lifting all of it away from her neck. "Wh-what are you doing?"

"We're going to need to do something about your hair," Sherlock said.

"You're going to…style my hair?" she asked.

"Certainly not. I don't know the first thing about it," he said turning away from her and walking across into the kitchen. "We are going to purchase you a new dress," he said. "I need you to do something for me tonight."

"Okay…"

"I need you to be sexy; could you do that for me?"

Molly thought the embarrassment might cause her to explode. "What…what for?"

"We're going to attend a dinner party, there's an expert there…or as close to an expert as one can get with this kind of thing," said Holmes. "He won't answer my calls though as he's rather paranoid, doesn't carry a mobile so we're going to need to blend and engage him in person."

"Why do you need me?"

Sherlock dropped to sit on the couch, pressing his finger tips together in front of his face. "Because I'm not welcome many places by many people, but with you there and a subtle disguise I can pass undetected," he clapped and sprang off of the couch and stepped onto and over the coffee table. "We'll purchase a dress on the way, ah this will work!"

He clasped her at the arm, pulling her along to follow him toward the door of the place. When Molly looked over the expression that he wore was something familiar, there was energy there and what almost looked like delight. Then the realization washed over her, he had found some small challenge in fixing her up, like it was a new mystery.

* * *

><p>It was another hour before they were in the back of a cab on the way to the location of the dinner party. Molly sat awkwardly with the small leather clasp purse pressed down into her lap. Sherlock certainly had an exact idea about what he wanted her to look like and she was instantly aware that anything she could have managed wouldn't have worked. The dress he had put her in was deep violet with small purple flowers embroidered on it. The fabric hugged her skin and, in this dress, Molly felt that she actually had curves!<p>

Some part of her had forgotten that.

Sherlock had asked one of the girls behind the store to pin Molly's hair up as nicely as possible and she had to admit she had done a good job. She had handled her own makeup, that much she could do. But when she found out the dress was two hundred and fifty pounds she didn't know what to say.

Holmes seemed to have some form of dress version of the attire he usually wore, the long, billowing coat and the scarf. All of them dark in color and utterly lavish, more so than normal. As an addition he was carrying a dress cane.

"You can keep the dress, you know," Sherlock said. "If that's what's bothering you…I'm certainly too lazy to take it back to the store and knowing my nights out it might get more than one bodily fluid sprayed across the stitch work…"

Molly giggled, covering her mouth as her face reddened again. Perhaps Sherlock had no idea how wrong what he had just suggested sounded, but she did. He glared at her but she stopped laughing in her own time. "Thank you though," she said. "It's a very lovely dress; I shall try and…take care of it."

"When we arrive we're to find an African by the name of Darweshi, he's a former priest who left the church because he disagreed with their stance on something," said Sherlock.

"Pedophilia?" asked Molly.

"The Devil…Darweshi believed that the Devil should be combated constantly and that to not do so was foolish. He even said the Devil walks among men," Sherlock said in a flat tone.

"You believe in that?" asked Molly.

He stared at her, half glaring. "I believe that the person who lies on the table in your mortuary is the victim of someone who might have believed in that. It could be that someone preserved a body for some ritualistic purpose, preserving the outside thought some means and only dropping it for some reason when they hadn't any need for it any longer…"

Molly's words caught in her throat, it was hard for her to contradict Sherlock. The last time he had told her she was wrong it had been about Jim. "But—up until the other day this man was walking around and going to work. He was in some financial firm, people there had seen him I'm sure."

Sherlock held a finger up and smiled condescendingly. "Oh how the unimaginative and stupid have such a small box of thought in which they operate." Molly sunk back into the seat of the cab, suddenly feeling like a mouse again. Her large eyes turned upward as she tried not to let his comment get to her. He continued speaking, "There must be more at play here, a twin brother or someone with a very good plastic surgeon, perhaps some disguise artist. I haven't figured it out yet. But that man couldn't have decomposed to that level in only half a day."

"I think you're over thinking things," Molly didn't know what had come over her.

The cab was pulling up to a stop, a wet curb alongside a great towering house that seemed to occupy its own block. "Well then, it's a good thing that I only brought you along to look pretty," Sherlock said.

They disembarked from the car and Molly held her tongue for the next several moments, feeling tremendously proud that she'd even managed as much as she had said. The cars around them were a distraction enough, Molly had never seen so many nice cars in one place. If the blokes from _Top Gear_ were here they'd cum themselves by now. Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces, Porsches—there was easily two million quid driving around out here.

"Try to look like you belong," Sherlock chided. "Don't stare."

"How did you get invited to this?" she asked.

"The person throwing it happens to be an old acquaintance," Sherlock said.

Molly nodded. "Right, someone you rescued from jail time?"

"My old cocaine dealer," he explained as they rounded onto the walkway.

That caught Molly off guard; it was something she never expected to have happen like this. Sherlock talking about his past and there was drugs involved. She had seen drug addicts before, Hell she had seen them fired from Bart's because well…they stole. They walked into the front door and it seemed that the man there already knew them, before she could ask about it they were walking into a lavish hall with an ornate chandler and marble floors. Molly almost stopped in her tracks.

Sherlock was close to her ear as they neared the archway that cut between the rounded stair case that came around them from either side. "When I lift your hand above your head," he grasped her hand gently, "I need you to twirl, do you understand?"

"What?"

"I don't want to stand out, we've got to just pass through the arch and onto the floor seamless," he said and ahead of them she could see now, everyone twirled as they walked in. She didn't say anything as they crossed the threshold and he raised her hand up high and they twirled out to the floor.

"Mister and Missus Sherlock Holmes," announced a man from somewhere off to the side.

Molly beamed with pride, she couldn't believe it. They thought they were married.

"Dammit!" Sherlock hissed, rushing her to the side of the room.

"What?"

"I didn't want them to announce us, we were to come in like that so as to not draw attention," Sherlock explained. He offered Molly his elbow. "We're going to have to work on a smaller time table now, stick close."

Molly pointed up to the far side of the room where a very dark skinned man was standing in a crisp white suit that looked like it cost more than Molly's flat. There was a large cross medallion hanging from his coat like a pocket watch. "Is that Mister Darweshi?"

"Brilliant eye, Molly. Come there's little time for us to catch up to him and then we can…"

Sherlock's voice was drowned out mid sentence by an effeminate male calling out to them. "Sherlock, Molly—it seems that things certainly have changed since we last saw each other, so nice to have the old gang back together…" pushing his way between the crowd of people was Jim Moriarty…gay Jim…Jim from IT.

Molly's entire body went rigid. She could feel the blood draining from her face. Jim was limping slightly, more than likely a product of the gunshot Holmes had delivered to him. His beady eyes darted between the two of them and as he neared he leaned in and kissed Molly on the side of her face. She unintentionally let out an audible whimper.

"You should be proud of yourself, Sherlock. You escaped my influence without nearly as much harm as I had hoped to inflict," a smile spread across his face. "Though this is just as well, you're more fun for me alive," he said.

"Be a dear, Molly and grab us some drinks," Sherlock released her arm from his and it seemed to snap her back to reality.

"Drinks, right."

"Oh now that was rather rude of you, Sherlock. We've hardly had the time to catch up! And I have to say I'm surprised to see this, you on a date with my leftovers—how is it that you get these little marionettes to dance so obediently for you?" he caught Molly by the arm.

"You're hurting me."

"Leave her be, Moriarty."

He was squeezing her hand, he was so strong. And he leaned close, smiling all the while and spoke in a sneer. "Did you tell him yet? Did you tell him how you tried to entice me? How you tried to get me into bed. Denying you was part of the fun, not because it tortured you but because to have intercourse with you would have been torture to me…"

Sherlock's cane caught Moriarty swiftly in the ribs causing him to loosen his grasp on her arm and stagger back. Holmes stepped in and grasped him at the shoulders. "Are you alright old friend?" he asked. He turned to a drink person, obviously feigning concern; at least obvious to Molly, "my friend here has something caught in his throat," he grabbed a pair of waters off the tray and handed one to Moriarty.

Molly stood there, tears welling up in her eyes as she watched Holmes pretend to be friends with Moriarty for the sake of their investigation. She could hardly think of the case anymore. As Sherlock was patting Jim on the back she saw Jim reach up and dribble something into Sherlock's drink. She was too late to rush forward and grab him and Moriarty pushed away.

Startled Sherlock stumbled backward toward Molly and she grabbed him around the shoulders. No one else had noticed. No one seemed to even see the three of them.

"Oh Sherlock, I don't want to kill you, but I can't have you getting in the way of what I'm working on, not this time," said Moriarty and he slipped back into the crowd.

Molly clutched Sherlock and she could feel him waning, he was coughing probably more psychosomatic than real as it had been too soon. "Are you…what do you want me to do?" she asked. Sherlock started for the stairs with Molly supporting him. A man was standing there guarding first riser, "Please, my-my husband is sick…" she must have sounded frantic. She wasn't acting.

The man nodded them up and it was hard, but she got Sherlock into the first bedroom that she could find. She lay him down and crawled onto the bed, Holmes lay there still for a moment. "The water tasted sweet, very sweet…I should have known…"

"Don't get worked up, it'll only lessen the time we have. How do you feel?" she asked.

"Strange…but you're going to have to do it Molly, you're going to have to find Darweshi…."

"I'm not leaving you to die," Molly said. "I don't trust that it was just some harmless thing and I'm not letting you die." Molly crawled up on top of him, straddling him and prying his eyes open and checking to see if she could find any sign of what he'd drank. "He poured it in there…it was lime green, like a green apple lolly…"

"Molly, please…leave me be it won't kill me outright, I'm sure…"

"No!" Molly hollered. "I'm not leaving you, you bloody…just shut the Hell up for once and let somebody fucking care about you!" she was crying and she must have looked a mess but it was the last thing on her mind. "It was sweet and lime green…sweet…"

"Maybe he sought to poison me with sour apple candy syrup," Sherlock chuckled.

Molly looked down at him. "No, you just…please be still…there's something…I can do this Sherlock just…" it was then she realized that she was straddling Sherlock Holmes with her face stained with tears and his cold blue eyes looking back up at her. Instinctively she bent down and kissed him. "Sorry, but I want to hear you complain about it when you're okay in a bit…I know what I need to do I think…I figured it out."

She bounded off of him. "I'll be right back, I just need to find something," and then she was gone.


	3. In Which Molly Commits Auto Theft

Chapter Three

**Author's Note: **_Bumping this up to an M rating from here on out for language and other things hinted at. Don't expect any super crazy sex scenes or anything though, that's not what I'm going for in this story. Plus I couldn't imagine trying to write one for Sherlock, he's already hard enough to write._

When Sherlock awoke Detective Inspector Dimmock was hovering nearby with a Styrofoam cup of hot tea, he cracked a slight smile. "Looks like you're back in the world of the living, Holmes," he said with a slight smirk. Something in the look on Holmes's face clued him in. "Confused, I take it?" asked Dimmock.

"Where am I?" a television droned on in the background about interrupted shipping schedules because of weather as Sherlock asked.

"Saint Bart's Hospital, Doctor Hooper's been keeping close watch on you," Dimmock said. "You owe that woman a great debt of gratitude, she broke a few laws saving your life," he cracked a smile.

"What…"

Dimmock sat the tea down. "That's for you," he pointed to the cup. "Hooper's never had as much as a speeding ticket. But she got one and committed motor vehicle theft just to get you out of there in a timely fashion…don't worry, the car's been returned and no charges were pressed…"

"Where is she now?" asked Sherlock.

"There were some tests she wanted to check in on, she's taken off from work and been here by your side all this time. I stopped by a few times because Lestrade has been…well out of town—there's been something of a strange thing happening and most of Scotland Yard's in an uproar, but I fear I've said too much."

Sherlock heft the tea and it looked like quite a struggle for him to just get it to his lips. "What could have the entire department up in arms like that," he smiled wryly over the top of his cup.

"Oh no…Doctor Hooper told me to refrain from telling you _anything_ to do with a case, that one knows you good it seems," Dimmock said. "I'd better go before you try and get more out of me." He was turning to leave and Sherlock lifted his free hand high up into the air to wave in short awkward motions. Dimmock had to wonder what he was doing, what he was thinking. The things inside that man's mind…it was a horrifying thought.

* * *

><p>Molly almost dropped the tray when she returned to the room to find Sherlock sitting up in bed scouring his mobile for what she could figure must have been clues. At first he didn't acknowledge her at all and she staggered over to his bed a smile plastered on her face. "Sherlock! You're awake."<p>

"Yes. I can't tell you thank you enough, Dimmock seems to think you were quite brilliant," he said only gazing at her for a short time. He turned back to his phone and then did a double take. "I see you've let your hair down."

"Oh…you noticed it?" Molly said reaching up and running her hand down through the side of her hair.

"Of course. You look simply ravishing like that."

"It kind of just happened, I didn't have anything to tie it up with and I've been showing here and wearing extra scrubs from my locker…I didn't want to leave you here alone too long and I thought that it would be best to let it dry like this and…Hell, I'm rambling." The thought occurred to her that the last time she saw him truly conscious she had kissed him, it hadn't left her head all day and she wondered how someone her age could turn into a little girl over a man. She shook the thought. "What are you doing?"

"Since you lost our lead I'm trying to find us a new one. It will take too long to find Darweshi again. He's a paranoid man, Molly and…"

"I didn't lose him. He and I spoke the next day and he told me what we would need to know, I looked into the books and some of the other information he gave me, took some doing," Molly said.

"Brilliant," Sherlock said.

"Thank you."

"Now then, how long have I been here?" he asked.

"Three days, they told me that if had been a few hours later we would have been looking at permanent brain damage and you would have had to go on dialysis possibly," she said. "But I knew what to tell them when I got here and how to slow the poison down…"

Sherlock seemed puzzled and for him to express that said a lot. "How did you know what the poison was?"

"It was a long shot really, you said it was sweet and I saw it was lime green. A few months back the vet was checking Toby out and asked if he had been near any radiator fluid. When I asked why he explained that it was really sweet and dogs and children would drink it, it's fatal and even when it's not it can be really deadly. It's not something you'd expect, we got lucky really…"

He was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before and he continued to stare for a long time. "Tests, always the little tests, that's what he does," Holmes was referring to Moriarty. "He must have known in some capacity I would be okay, though I doubt he'd thought you'd be the one to do it. How did you get me out of the mansion and into a car?"

"I cleared off one of the wheeled dinner carts, brought it round, dragged you onto it and took it down the lift to the service entrance, when I got there some of the wards helped me get you out and they started treating you immediately because I knew what the poison was…"

"Guessed what the poison was, it was a gamble…"

"Yes, but it was a good guess," Molly said.

"That it was, must have been riveting," he said.

"It was horrifying. I thought you might die or lose a limb or even have brain damage," Molly said sounding somewhat frantic as the thoughts played over in her head again.

Sherlock moved forward in the bed. "Well you performed wonderfully," he said. "Now did you bring the notes you gathered from Darweshi?"

"They're in your study," she said. "But I think this is where I get out of this whole thing, I can't do this with you…I was wrong to think I ever could help you with an investigation to this level."

"Molly wait…"

"DI Lestrade will be coming to pick you up, he told me to tell you that _he won't be bringing a police car_, _so you have no need to worry,_" she was gathering her coat up and grabbing at the handle of a small overnight bag.

"Why didn't you ring the authorities?" asked Sherlock.

"I know you're a recovering drug addict," Molly said plainly. "The long sleeves, the needle marks on your arms…I noticed them when I got your coat off. I figured that you might not like the police being involved," she said as she neared the door. "Well…I'll see you around the morgue Sherlock, please be careful," and with that, Molly was out the door.

* * *

><p>Lewis's back dropped against the huge shipping yard crates drinking in the air as the stillness washed over the Port of London. He ejected the magazine from his gun, checking it as he spoke. "No wonder you left, Holly. Your country sucks camel dick."<p>

"Glad to see you're appreciative of all that Great Britain has to offer," she said with a sarcastic drawl to her voice.

"Let's be honest, the _Great_ hasn't been applicable for a while now," Lewis said.

Holly smirked. "America's not exactly a spring chicken anymore either," she picked herself up from the spot where she'd taken cover to check the opposite side of the shipping yard. "What is it you want to take the piss out on us about this time?"

Lewis dusted himself off and came to Holly's side. "Well, for one we just had a shoot out with some British gangsters. I'm not complaining about the shoot out part—I actually like a good shoot out, its where I shine…"

"I'll give credit where credit's due," Holly said.

"But what bothers me is that your criminals are _reduced _to using crossbows," he said.

"Guns are illegal, they probably assembled them themselves…" she said.

"Explain why they were dressed like they were going to a Harry Potter book release?" asked Lewis.

Holly shrugged. "Can't be positive on that…I haven't seen that before…outside of Harry Potter book releases…" when she realized what she had said, Holly could only blush.

Lewis shook his head. "Wait," he said. "Robes, do you think we could be dealing with cultists?" asked Lewis.

"Cultists? Dead men walking around? Strange weather patterns, this is shaping up to be a proper case, yeah?" Holly said.

"Yeah but we had to kill our only leads so far," Lewis said. "The morgue didn't pan out and there seems to be someone one step ahead of us leading us just where they want us to be." They headed back toward the car on foot, it was a long way back out of the shipping yard.

Holly smirked. "You're paranoid, everything is always some apocalyptic conspiracy," she said. "How many cults have we busted? They're usually seeking wealth or immortality and they're never barking up the wrong tree…"

"I want you to look at something," Lewis said as he pulled out his phone. "This is more than our average case," he said as he wrapped away at the screen. He held the phone out for her to see after a few seconds and Holly took it, looking over what seemed to be a weather map.

"What is that? Is that…is this England?" she pointed to the screen.

Lewis nodded. "This weather mass covers most of the Northern Atlantic and Europe, it's like a giant super cell storm…I noticed it earlier. That's why the rain has stopped here for the time being…but its collapsing inward on London."

"What could cause that?"

"Something really serious…think I'm being paranoid now?" asked Lewis.

* * *

><p>Whatever the intention had been when she returned home, Molly hadn't expected it to end up like this. She was perched in the middle of her bed with the blankets swirled around her waist. The entire room smelled like liquor. While she hardly drank, it had seemed an appropriate response to what happened and it would be the perfect excuse.<p>

More than anything Molly was embarrassed at her reaction; the crying had been the least of it. Part of her wanted to hate Sherlock Holmes and everything that he stood for. Maybe they could finally be even now, he'd taken a bullet for her and she'd saved his life from some very lethal poison. Maybe when he swept into her morgue the next time flashing those big eyes she can finally look him in the face and say she's got him out of her system.

She got up to shower, stumbling through the intoxication as she fought to get into her bathroom. Toby was nowhere to be seen; no doubt her behavior had scared the cat. Before long she was in the shower and the hot water was washing over her, it had been over a day since her last proper shower. In her mind it was far too long. Molly had tripped and stumbled her way into soreness, though it wasn't all that had happened. When she left the hospital and started to drink, she considered finding some bloke at a pub to get off with. Maybe she'd let him do more and though this wasn't like her at all…it wasn't something she had ever done. She felt that it was just one more way to wash out anything she harbored for Sherlock. In the end she had taken the matter into her own hands, but it hadn't saved her from the shame.

That was something she couldn't wash off.

There was a loud meow from somewhere near the front of her flat and a moment later there was a boisterous knock. She stopped the water. "Just a minute!" she hollered. Molly climbed clumsily out of the tub and threw a towel around herself. "Who is it?"

There was no answer.

She made her way to the door, clutching the towel at her breasts and there was more knocking. "Who's there?" she asked.

When she looked out of the peep hole she saw Sherlock's huge blue eyes staring back at her. "Open the door, Molly."

She flung the door open. "What do you want? And…how the bloody Hell do you know where I live?"

Sherlock's eyes traced a line around her, scanning her apartment and then her in a flash. "You're a creature of convenience, Molly. Nearest flat to Saint Bart's…I checked the listings out front and lied to the doorman to get in," he said.

"Classic. You're not just going to come to my work and ruin things from here on, you're going to be doing it at my home now too?" Molly said, she could tell she was slurring her speech but she didn't care. "Do you have any idea what you do to me?"

"You've got a crush on me, though I can't understand why. It would seem that tonight has been a particularly bad one though. You're inebriated, vodka and rum from the smell of it and you took to trying to call an old boyfriend…the book on the desk is covered in phone numbers, your phone's newer than your last relationship. When I last checked it not many men's names in it and you had to resort to old record keeping methods to get at them. You didn't add them to the phone because they're not something you hold as part of your current life. You reconsidered it though, the phone's nowhere near the book, I can tell the apartment's not usually in this state because look at the other parts…no mess, no clutter. Everything has its own neat place and you can see the dust around where you moved things. From the state of your eyes you've been crying…and from the state of that drawer and your bed coverings you've been masturbating. Have I hit all the finer points?" he asked.

"How did you…never mind. Just, God this is so embarrassing," Molly stumbled back into her room and Sherlock let himself in. Toby was rubbing himself against the side of Sherlock's pant leg as he closed the door. "This is so bloody embarrassing do you have any idea?"

Sherlock glanced down at the cat and stooped to pet its head. "Everyone masturbates Molly."

"Even the _great_ Sherlock Holmes?" asked Molly with a tinge of disdain in her tone.

"Of course not, there's hardly time for that. Come along Molly," he said.

"What?"

"I need you, I need someone to work with me, so please Doctor Hooper don't make me employ much more brazen methods to coerce you. If I can manipulate you when you're sober I'd hate to see what I could do while drunk…"

"You can't tell someone you're going to do it and do it," she said.

"I can. Now come, you're hardly realizing the finer point here. I need your help…this case is something big," Sherlock said. "The notes you took were brilliant and with them already I've found some very interesting things."

Molly sighed. "Can I at least get my clothes?"

Sherlock threw his coat over her. "There, no one will know you're not dressed. There's precious little time Molly—the body from your examination room has vanished and there were some murders at the docks…more dead men, these carrying crossbows," Sherlock put and arm around her and guided her out of the apartment. "I'll buy you more clothes, the game is afoot, Molly! Come along, Holmes and Hooper's greatest adventure…I shall dictate the finer details to my blogger…"

He drew her onto her bed slippers and out of the door to the apartment, grabbing the keys as they went. Sherlock only returned briefly to snatch Toby up.


	4. In Which Sherlock and Molly Take a Dip

Chapter Four

The driver never glanced back at them or spoke as the taxi ripped through the streets of central London. Molly preferred the silence; there were those who loved the cabbie with personality and wit who liked to ask you strings of questions like you're on some poor-man's version of a Graham Norton-esque Chat show. It wasn't that she considered herself shy or even was, she just hated the rapid fire question and answer conversation. Worse, Sherlock was here with her and the last thing she needed was to be goaded into answering strange personal questions in front of him.

The car couldn't be wide enough for Molly. Sherlock was confident as ever sitting with half of his body straddling the center of the car and staring dead ahead. She didn't dare flinch for fear of brushing against him; the last thing she wanted to do was cause him to mention the kiss.

How had he managed to get out of the hospital so quickly? She wondered if this is how it always was with Sherlock Holmes. Was this the kind of thing that he and Doctor Watson got into all of the time? She never got the finer details until John updated his blog with them and with many of them being ongoing cases she didn't even get the full picture.

From beneath the car came a thunderous crash and they were jolted slightly off of the ground, Molly was bounced against Sherlock's side and instinctively grabbed him around the leg and shoulder. She had expected…she didn't know what she expected but she certainly didn't expect how he reacted. Sherlock reached up and steadied her gently.

"Sorry about the bump," came the cabbie's voice.

Molly brushed her hair back out of her face. "It's quite alright," she said.

"You pair're the quietest couple I've had in me cab all day," he said and Molly could feel her stomach churning with anxiety

Sherlock scanned Molly's face and something made her lean forward between the seats. "Knackered is all, it's been a long couple of days," she said in a tone that should have conveyed they were too tired to talk.

For a brief moment it appeared as if Sherlock had something to say about what she had told the cabbie. His lips parted and he shifted in his seat, but then said nothing and turned to glance out of the driver side window. Molly pressed her lips tight, her leg jittering beneath her hand as she turned to glance out her own window. She searched the passing cityscape as it streaked past them, Sherlock hadn't told her where they were going or what he had found in the notes that she left him about Darweshi and his thoughts on everything

Molly couldn't believe any of it, she hadn't been in a church since she went off to Uni. The things that she wrote down from the Darweshi seemed to be little more than a mixture of religious superstition, paranoia and conspiracy. Still she thought that Sherlock would be able to make something from this nonsense…

"Down!" Sherlock's voice reverberated through the inside of the car and before Molly was sure she processed what was being said, she was pulled down into Sherlock's lap and he moved to cover her with his own body.

A split second later there was an explosion of glass and then the squeal of tires. The car fish-tailed wildly and spun out. They were thrown against the passenger side of the back seat and when Molly looked up the driver's head was dangling off to one side with a huge gaping hole where his ear had been. He'd been shot.

Everything happened so fast and as she screamed she was suddenly taken with this weightless feeling, tossed to one side and then the other with Sherlock before they were jolted hard with an explosive impact. Water and glass flooded past them and her world darkened, she could feel the sting as the cold water of the Thames ripped through the car and her lungs filled.

Molly couldn't swim. She was going into the water in an out of control cab with a shot driver and she couldn't swim.

* * *

><p>Molly's eyes opened to Sherlock's blurry face hovering over her and a stinging soreness in her body. She leaned forward, pushing him away and hacking up water onto the ground. The clothes that Sherlock had purchased for her after leaving the flat clung to her cold, pale skin. Every part of her was wet and the cold nipped at her skin.<p>

She coughed as she pulled his coat down onto herself. "I'm sorry…I…I can't swim," Molly said.

"I know."

"The driver's dead," she said. "It was meant for us wasn't it?"

Sherlock shook his head. "One shot, straight into a moving vehicle? A sniper with that degree of skill would have hit us if he meant, though we could have very well been killed," he said.

"I would advise that you stay here, wait for the Police," said Sherlock.

"Where are you going?"

"I've still got this case and with what just happened there's more reason for me to get back to it. It's not much further now," he said.

"I don't want to wait here," Molly said.

Sherlock scratched the side of his head. "This is going to get more dangerous and while I needed someone to help me, I don't need someone who can be used against me," he said.

"They know I exist, it's too late. They could just as easily do that now and really and if you'd need the help I'd rather have you there to look after me than the coppers—I've seen a fair share of their charges come across my examination tables," said Molly with a confidence that she didn't think it was possible for her to have around Sherlock.

She was telling him what she wanted, sharing her opinions about things. Maybe the reason that he was so shocked that she was smart was because she never let him know that she was before.

"Absolutely not," Sherlock said unblinking. "You're going back to New Scotland Yard as soon as I can contact Lestrade…"

"Why? Because I'm a woman? Would you send Doctor Watson to wait while you ran off?" she asked.

Sherlock stood as if the cold and the water wasn't affecting him at all. "You're not John, you've never been to a war zone and you're not ready for what this seems to be becoming. You're of no use here anymore, go back to the station and forget I called on you…"

"_No use to you?_ So now you're admitting it—you're as bad as Jim was, you're—you're—"

And that was what did it, Molly didn't care that he had dragged her from the cold waters of the Thames and saved her life and she didn't care how she felt about him otherwise. She lunged up from the bench and swung as hard as she could muster making contact with his face in a quick sweeping arc. Sherlock grabbed his cheek with one hand and stared at her with disbelief, apparently he was as shocked as her.

_Molly Hooper had slapped Sherlock Holmes._

It didn't measure at first, the gravity of the situation had to marinate. They stood there locked in silence and tears of remorse welled up in Molly's big eyes, she could literally feel the tectonic shift in their relationship. For an instant she was scared, unsure of what he would do next.

Sherlock Holmes glanced at the ground as he released the sore spot on his face and reached around to his back to produce a handgun, Molly was very still now. "Do you know how to use a pistol?"

"Uh—in theory, I mean, I guess," she said.

He checked the safety, ejected the magazine and the bullet in the chamber, catching the latter expertly. Then he reloaded the gun to show her. "Take it," he said. "For protection, but stay close…that's a last resort," he pointed to the gun.

Molly nodded vigorously.

"We're not too far now, getting into another cab wouldn't be wise," he said. "I carried you a little ways and we're going to have to stay off of the streets for safety. The shooter will have no idea where we ended up or even if we truly lived. He fired from some distance, high up and with a high powered rifle…"

"How did you see all of that?"

Sherlock just glared at her. "Come on."

They pressed on through the murky darkness. It was cod but his coat draped about her was a huge help in the matter. Molly kept the gun hidden close to her body, though she couldn't believe that it had just happened. Sherlock said nothing about the slap and as they made the slow trek through the city she wondered if he was even thinking about it anymore.

Hell, he was Sherlock. He was always thinking and in that instant his mind frightened her. Maybe she had gone too far with her comment about Jim?

They made their way along the river front toward the ports and then Molly understood where they were headed. Just when the silence had started to become somewhat comforting Sherlock spoke up. "If you actually think I'm as bad as Moriarty then why do you so relentlessly pursue me? Asking me for coffee, the makeup, the appalling attempts at flirting, kissing me…"

Molly grimaced. "I didn't mean that, you just—you shouldn't use people."

"You tried to use Jim to get to me, though you didn't know what or who he was. But it was blatant and despite the relatively microscopic ramifications that would have had on you and I, here you are telling me not to use people," Sherlock said.

She came to a dead stop. "I might—I wish I was using him to do that. Or rather I wish that's all it was. Maybe I genuinely liked him and its less embarrassing to claim that it was all about you, in the end you turned out to be the good one."

"The good one?" Sherlock scoffed. "You shouldn't put so much stock in people, especially sociopathic people. You should follow the examples set by others."

"You mean like Doctor Watson? Or Sarah, who actually refers to you as a friend? And then there's that odd brother of yours who has come by more than once to snoop around and ask me what you've been into and how you're doing and your sweet landlady, she thinks the world of you I can tell just from how she talked about you…do you think that with all of these people you're still some friendless recluse. Maybe it's you who's kidding yourself—"

_How much did I drink earlier? _

"Those people show an interest in me for excitement or mild fascination or because they see some benefit from it." He doubled back to approach Molly. "So did you think you were going to save me from myself with a cup of coffee or attempt to look cute? The only difference between me and Jim Moriarty is an arbitrary line drawn in the sand by Bureaucrats and lawmakers and which side of it we decide to stay on!" he said.

"Even you seem to have an attraction to dangerous, unavailable men. One profound enough to cause you to chase after cruel, heartless men," Sherlock added.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Molly said with a finality to her voice. Her frustration with him washed away the fear she'd felt and she couldn't worry about the death of that innocent bystander, the cabbie when Sherlock was making sure to push her to such an extent and now that there was nothing else to be said she just kept quiet and followed him through the darkened streets.

* * *

><p>This time Molly did as instructed and the results were pretty amazing. Sherlock loosened his tie and slid it up until it was around the top of his forehead as they entered the hotel, his movements became jaunty and over exaggerated and he wobbled with each step. He was pulling Molly by the hand excitedly but somehow the feeling of magic that she felt there would be between them was gone.<p>

She stayed near the entrance way as Sherlock approached the counter, speaking a little too loudly. "Aye, mate," his accent was totally different from normal. "You see this bird I got back here, we're a little far from home so I was wondering if you could offer a little assistance and what not, there's a few quid in it for you…"

Sherlock placed the money on the counter and took a key, he held the cover up until they were in the lift. Of course the key was necessary to get upstairs and Molly had to do in the matter was stand back pretending to bite her nails that little devilish motion was enough to get what Holmes had wanted across.

They took to the halls of the third floor, the key was for the fourth floor but it was just for access. Darweshi was here…in a hotel by the docks. When they found the desired room number Molly was the one who knocked, lightly at first but with a growing intensity. There was no answer.

Molly sighed. "You think he's not there?" she asked.

"Wait here," Sherlock said and he was off.

For several moments Molly didn't know what he had gotten up to. She thought about little arbitrary things. At least here in this hallway she was safer than she was in the streets and they could call the police for that man they'd left in the Thames. And the thought of Toby left in Sherlock's flat crossed her mind. She wondered how the cat was fairing. He seemed to like Sherlock at least, animals were usually right about people, they could just sense things.

The door opened and Sherlock was standing in the frame. "Darweshi's dead," he said. He opened the door wider to show her the splayed open corpse of the African. She winced at the sight of the body sprawled out across the bed with the skin folded back as if someone had been doing surgery. There was so much blood. So often in her profession you forgot about blood, it was mostly gone by the time she got to see a body.

"What…what happened here?" she asked.

"The killer entered through the window, like I did, and killed him. He's been dead more than an hour and it looks like he was looking into the same thing we were, the dead bodies of the men who were found at the docks were found less than a block from here and he checks himself into this hotel right before it happens?" Sherlock said.

"This body is fresh, not old like the others," Molly treaded softly into the room. "We really need to call the Police at this point. I mean really Sherlock."

* * *

><p>"This one of yours now, Freak?" Sally Donovan spat. "What, he bring you here to get you all turned on? I knew you were into monsters…"<p>

"Enough Sally!" Lestrade hollered from the other side of the room and the other she was forced to shut up, moving silently out of the room. Lestrade made his way toward Molly and Sherlock. "This is a busy night for you, cab at the bottom of the river with a dead body in it and a dead Kenyan in a bedroom…"

"Are you going to tell me that you think I killed them?" Sherlock asked.

"That's not it at all, but it seems you're just causing a ruckus here in town and this latest investigation seems to be putting people in danger. I noticed Doctor Hooper was a little cut up here," Lestrade said.

"I'm fine, really. But you're too kind."

"Even so, Sherlock we've got to take you out of the picture for a while…I'm being forced by my superiors to confine you to your flat," Lestrade said.

"Preposterous, I'm not one of your bloody lackeys!"

Lestrade grimaced. "Even so, we can place you under house arrest and ask that you not stray from your flat. You can ask your landlady to pick up anything you might need."

"She's not my housekeeper and I can't stay stuck inside of that ruddy flat on Baker's street all day!" his eyes were wide and he looked honestly afraid.

Molly pushed her way into the conversation. "Can I…visit him? I can take him things and bring him any news, it might keep him stimulated and the like," she suggested.

"You're welcome to help him out, Doctor Hooper, I'm sorry that you got dragged into this whole thing," Lestrade said. He was always so polite; she thought he felt sorry for her because of the Jim incident. That was when he had met her, him and everyone else and most of them felt sorry. Sally Donovan felt otherwise.

Sherlock shook his head. "You don't seem to grasp the situation at hand here, there's no possible way that you can solve this, you need me…"

"You overextended that privilege by not coming to us sooner, Sherlock. This is the second time; the first almost got three other people killed…" Lestrade said. "Now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you to come with me and I'm sorry, but it's going to have to be in the back of a police car this time."

* * *

><p>The additional piece being added to Sherlock's wardrobe required more than just a little work. Lestrade left them in the car while the flat was policed and prepared for the bracelet. Though the senior detective had tried to get her to sit up front, Molly took to the back seat with Sherlock and as a result was locked in until they came back. The whole way to the flat Sherlock didn't say a word despite the attempts by Lestrade to speak with him.<p>

And he had driven them himself, as if to make sure that they were no more abuses acted out today. It might have been more for her benefit than Sherlock's but even then Molly was glad for both of them. It had been five minutes when she finally mustered the nerve to say something to Sherlock again.

"I know this seems dim, but it might not be that long," she said.

He didn't answer.

She sat, legs pressed together and her hands clasped together in her lap. It was tense in the back of the car with him and after all of the biting remarks they'd taken out on one another the only thing that Molly could feel was a sort of mental exhaustion. The events of the last few days were starting to take their toll and she wondered if it would get better before it got worse.

"You don't need to feel like you're broken or a monster, no one's normal," she said. "I take anti-depressants now, I did before I met you too but since Jim…I've had nightmares and I've spent a fair share of nights crying myself to sleep."

Sherlock didn't answer.

"When I was younger I used to cut," Molly said suddenly. "It wasn't constant and it was just…it was addictive and my therapist said I hid it well…she said it was more common than I thought but…heh…I never believed her, you know?"

Sherlock turned to her. "I noticed, you cut the backs of your legs where no one would care to look, I saw the them when you were in the towel earlier…"

Molly blushed, having forgotten that he had seen her wrapped up in nothing but a towel just hours ago. She let out a short dopey laugh and glanced in his direction. "We're having an awful string of dates, that ought to be a sign. First you drink a glass of coolant meant for cars and I steal a car…then the next night you go from seeing me mostly nude to going over the bridge into the Thames to the back of a police car…"

Then he did something she never expected. He honestly chuckled. "No one can say it was dull," he mused.

"Sherlock…can you come here, I want to see something," Molly said in her boldest tone. When he didn't move she looked somewhat cross. "Come now, I saved your life you know…I could at least get you to trust me on this."

When he moved close this time, she turned to face him slightly and pulled him in and kissed him. He didn't resist her or appear shocked, though she couldn't tell if he knew why she was doing it. Hell, she didn't know. And as they were pressed together two things became abundantly clear.

First, Sherlock had no idea how to kiss. Molly wondered if, kissing this badly, he had ever done it before.

Second, the police had made a big mistake. See they had been otherwise thorough in their inquiries when placing Sherlock into custody and checked him head to toe, much to his dismay. But with her back pressed against the door and his coat pressed in around her she felt the cold metallic weight pressed against her thigh…

When she pulled back from him she could hardly think about what she was doing but there was something deep inside of her that was screaming for her to do it. "Sherlock…you're brilliant…"

Blatant realization washed the confusion from his pale face as he saw Molly go into the coat. She drew the gun and steadied her arms on Sherlock's shoulders. "This is incredibly stupid…"

"Don't worry, Miss Hudson will care for Toby," he said.

"I know," she said fumbling to click the safety into the off position. Sherlock leaned into her and while she knew it was to avoid dampen the explosive sound of the gunshot, her heart tripled in speed.

For a brief second in time Molly could only hear the sound of her own heart and Sherlock's breathing. She huffed in as much air as she could, shut her lungs and fired.

The muzzle flash and sonic boom were more than she had expected and Molly had unintentionally closed her eyes. By the time she opened him Sherlock was out of the car offering his hand to her. She reached out and let him pull her from the back seat and he took the gun in a flash.

Outside of 221B Baker's Street there were three police cars, Sherlock flattened a pair of tires on each of them with six quick, well placed gunshots. He tucked the gun back into the coat Molly wore and the two of them dashed off through the streets.

In spite of everything that Sherlock was, in spite of how much she was reminded of Jim whenever she looked at him there was something that he could do better than anyone else and whether Lestrade admitted it or not the police weren't equipped to _help themselves_ this time.

The dead bodies moving around, an African man murdered for getting too close, a crackshot sniper putting slowing them down and Jim Moriarty showing up at the same dinner party they happened to be…it was all interconnected and this was Sherlock Holmes's case.


	5. In Which Mistakes Are Made

Chapter Five

**Author's Note: **_It would seem that Molly has taken over this story for her own rambunctious little adventure and she's more or less dragging Sherlock and the plot along with her, I apologize to anyone who finds this development upsetting. But I really love Molly's character, I love what she is in Sherlock and I love how she's portrayed. I think it's a shame she's not given more chances to shine around here and I think this is becoming more and more something of that nature. _

_This chapter is dedicated to patatomat from Deviant Art who drew a beautiful picture of Molly for me. Molly's my favorite! Thanks patatomato!_

* * *

><p>Several miles from Bakers Street and after a short trip to the shops, they set up in a hotel room on the edge of a lower class district of London. It was well past midnight when Sherlock to lay all of the things they had purchased out over the bed in a neat line, as if to examine them all. There was an assortment of things, clothes, makeup, hair products and a small, tightly guarded bag Sherlock wouldn't let her see inside of.<p>

He sat on at the bedside chair in the dim lamp light as Molly inspected the room. At first it had escaped her notice, but there was one glaringly obvious problem with the lodgings that she felt to bring to the attention of Sherlock right away. "There's one bed," she said before crossing the floor to stand at his side. "There's only one bed in here?"

There was no reply from Sherlock as he inspected the things on the bed with overwhelming scrutiny.

"Sherlock!"

"We're going to have to dye your hair," he said suddenly. "I've bought some red hair dye as it would be the color they'd least likely expect to see you as and it shall produce the greatest effect and result."

"What are you talking about? I've got an issue with the bedding here…"

"There's no time, we're going to need to coat the edges of forehead and neck with Vaseline," Sherlock said holding up a small bottle in his hand. "We need to make sure there are no stains on your skin. You will also need to remove your shirt…"

Molly spun around in disbelief. "My shirt?"

"Stains…we can't have any stains," Sherlock said frantically. "Now come on."

Hair dye wasn't something that Molly knew at all, she had never dyed her hair and though she trusted Sherlock and didn't want to get him caught. Having her shirt off in front of him helped to take the sting out of losing the familiarity of her hair. His motions were gentle as he swept the hair off of the back of her neck. He massaged the color into her hair thoroughly, at times his arms would brush against her bare skin.

Molly kept the bra on, she wasn't letting him look at her like that. But as he worked her hair through his fingers, the dark red goop of the dye trickling down into the bathtub, Sherlock didn't seem to be bothered with the fact that she was as near topless as he would probably ever see her.

Without stopping to read any instructions and seemingly knowing every step by heart, Sherlock had the dye in her hair in just over forty minutes. She was wrapped in a towel, standing before the mirror looking at herself with the flaming red hair trailing down the sides of her face. "Where did you learn to do this…so well?"

"Just something I picked up, can you cut hair?" he asked her.

"I've never done it before but…"

"There's not time to teach you, I'll make due," Sherlock grabbed a stack of the clothes of the bed and strolled into the bathroom shutting the door behind himself as Molly watched in the body-length mirror.

He was gone for a time, showering, (as she had done when he instructed after the dye-job) and when the water stopped running she was watching news. There wouldn't be any mention of their antics or the murders, the British government had much more pressing things at hand. It was almost a full hour when Sherlock emerged in nothing but a towel with his dark hair pulled back and frosted at the tips.

Molly stared in disbelief. "What have you done to yourself?"

"If we're to be in disguise, we need to make sure we're truly in disguise," Sherlock said. "I'm reluctant to even stay in this room; no doubt my meddlesome brother already knows where we are…"

"Would he turn you in?"

"He'd probably attempt to assist me, but I can't be bothered to hear him patter on," he said swatting at the air in annoyance. "Now then, there are clothes here for you on the bed, remember plenty of makeup when we depart in the morning. We're going to have to look the part."

"What part…and you never addressed this one bed issue," Molly said from her spot on the side of the bed nearest the lamp.

Sherlock dove into the bed, curling up on the side opposite Molly. He was still in the towel and above covers, thankfully he bed was big enough that he wasn't actually that near her. "We shall be playing Chavs, misanthropes, hoodlums…"

Molly delved into the bag with her hands and drew out a denim skirt with frayed edges. "You expect me to wear this, it'll barely cover my thighs…"

"You will find leggings in the bottom of the other bag if you so desire, though I wouldn't protest if you chose not to wear them," Sherlock said.

She had to fight the veiled compliment that he gave her, she suspected that it was meant to distract. ""I'm not referring to the temperature outside, I wouldn't wear a skirt like this if it was forty-five degrees outside!" she said.

Sherlock lay on his back eyes closed, hands clasped over his lap and a smirk on his face. "Ah then you would have us come this far only to be apprehended," he said.

A morose expression overcame Molly's face and she rolled her body over to face away from him, turning out the light. "Goodnight, Sherlock," she said in a bitter tone.

"Sweet dreams, Molly."

* * *

><p>When Molly awakened all of the light left the room to be replaced by a thick, palpable darkness that she swore she could almost here. There was pressure on her stomach, a hand and arm wrapped around her to draw her in and it was several moments before she came to the realization that it was Sherlock's arm.<p>

With this development she had been turned back into that mousey little girl, an electric heat passed between them as they lay there and she wanted nothing more than to soak this moment up for as long as possible. She moved slow, placing her hand over his so that her fingers ghosted across his skin. _This felt so…right._

All of it was washed away. Everything that had been wrong, all of his frustrating denials of her advances, all of the complications with their current situation and the fact that they were fugitives, so to speak, was gone. His fingers dug into her slightly, pulling her tighter to him and she could feel that floppy, tuft of hair brush against the back of her neck.

Molly let out a cautious sigh, not wanting to look back or move for fear it might wake him. And then through the darkness came a raspy voice. "Molly…" she didn't even believe that she had truly heard anything at first. Just her imagination, she surmised.

"Molly…"

"Yes."

"Molly…" this time it was followed by a strong tug guiding her onto her back. She followed suit, wondering what he was getting at. Knowing that he couldn't be doing what seemed most likely. Sherlock's hand traced a path along her thigh and she stopped breathing. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness and she could see the pale hard edges of his jaw bone as he moved to kiss her.

She opened her mouth to his and his tongue brushed playfully along the front of her teeth. He lay atop her as they continued to kiss and Molly moaned softly into his mouth, unintentionally. Embarrassed she shut her eyes, almost certain that the glow of her cheeks could be seen through the lightless expanse of the room.

Outside it was raining and the patter of it against the windows reminded her of what had started this all, the day back in the morgue…the rain…those impossible bodies…and something else…

…_why was the FBI there? And now the bodies had gone missing…_

_Why was she thinking about this when Sherlock had suddenly found a new passion for kissing? _

In the distance there was a crackle of thunder and when she opened her eyes in shock she could see him in the lightning. His body was thin but toned and his he was maneuvering himself for something else. Molly didn't care, she didn't know how, but she had little regard for her usual prudence in such matters. A moment like this wouldn't present itself, yet all the while she thought: _how unlike me._

More thunder and lightning and he was holding her wrists, pinning her back to the bed. His body had slipped in between her legs—she didn't even remember opening them but she was suddenly aware of how close they were, how a towel was all that separated them. He was kissing her neck and she resisted the urge to let out a sound, her breathing slowed to a crawl as she fought against the need to moan.

And when he bit her softly all of the work was in vain. She let out a sharp cry, but as the bite became deeper her throat rasped. His hands tightened around her wrists and it felt like he would crush her. She tried to scream but she could only manage a single word. "Sherlock…"

He pressed his face deeper into her neck and the pain took over. It felt like he might tear her throat out.

"Sherlock!"

Her wrists were embedded in the mattress as he forced his full weight down on her and when he brought his head and body back he stayed pressed firmly between her legs, effectively pinning her to the bed.

Violent thunder shook the whole room as a burst of lightning illuminated the entire room. Molly let out a gasp as she saw his face hovering above her.

Jim Moriarty, his mouth dripping with her blood, was holding her to the bed. Sherlock had just been there moments ago, she had just seen him and though she tried to wriggle free she couldn't. Jim started to tear at her clothes, pulling and ripping them off of her. She turned, looking for any item to help her and that's when she saw herself standing near the window, framed in the lightning.

"You said it yourself, they're just alike…" the other Molly said.

"No…" Molly yelled but Jim hit her hard in the cheek.

"I hate to get my hands dirty…but this is just what you asked for…" Moriarty said.

Sherlock's voice came from the corner and suddenly he was standing there. "You couldn't have me Molly so you took to trying to shag him? Maybe I am just like him…but that makes you little more than a slag."

There were other voices grumbling in agreement, Doctor Watson and Sarah. Sherlock's brother was standing next to that strange woman who was always on her Blackberry. "That one there's got a revolving door in her knickers…" she said.

"…and she populates it with _freaks_," Sally Donovan was there framed by other members of the force including Lestrade and Dimmock.

And Moriarty was going to force himself on her, he was pulling at her pants as she fought his hands away to no avail. A sinking feeling washed over her and she could hear laughter. Her stomach churned and a burning sensation raced up her esophagus.

* * *

><p>Molly sprang from the nightmare to find herself in an empty hotel bed, before she could begin to consider what this meant she was bounding for the bathroom. She reached the toilet fractions of a second before her chest heaved deeply and she regurgitated into the porcelain bowl. A second time she vomited and a third, in quick succession and she was sobbing, crying and alone. Her arms hurt, she could still feel the phantom pain where the dream SherlockMoriarty had held her down.

And as she grasped the sides of the bowl for support she looked over to see Sherlock. He was sitting alongside the bathtub with a shocked expression plastered on his face. On the tub's edge were a razor blade, a shortened drinking straw and a neat white line of what Molly already knew to be cocaine.

She snatched at the towel rack, the nearest thing to her, and threw the towel over at the drugs and Sherlock. The powder scattered in the wind made by the towel's movement through the air. "You've got some bloody cheek," she dropped back against the wall to face him. The taste of vomit was still hot in her mouth. Molly fought to get to her feet and washed her face in the sink, rinsing her mouth out too. The entire time Sherlock said nothing.

"No brilliant explanations? Where is it? Where is the rest of it?" on the floor near his feet was the little bag he had guarded so well earlier. She grabbed it up before he could move and tossed it into the toilet with the vomit and flushed it down.

Sherlock was on his feet in an instant and nearly tackled her. "I need that."

"That could kill you," Molly protested, she was still crying though she could tell why anymore. "We need you though, this city needs you…"

"This city doesn't know me," Sherlock said.

Molly fumbled for the complementary mouthwash and poured the whole bottle in to swish it around between her teeth and over her tongue. "It still needs you," she said. Talking and thinking were hard and for no reason at all she felt inebriated.

Sherlock raked his hands back through his newly frosted hair. "That helps me think…it clears my head. Now we've got to get some more…"

"It's killing you," Molly screamed again. "That's what it does, that's something I know for sure…you could go into cardiac arrest—it'll melt the cartilage in your nose and could cause you to have medical problems there and…"

"You don't understand, it makes me better," Sherlock said frantic.

Molly got right up next to him on the floor, pressing him back against the wall. "You're good enough already," he seemed absolutely distraught for a brief moment. Then she kissed him. "There are other things that can clear your head though…"

Let her be a slag if that's what they'd call her. Whoever they were. Molly had never more than kissed Jim, though not for her trying. But in this state and here, she knew that Sherlock was what she wanted, he was what she had wanted for so long now and she hated herself for not blatantly stating it earlier.

* * *

><p>It was late morning when she awakened, the sun was peeking through the blinds and into the open bathroom door. She and Sherlock had slept there on the floor against the tub. There hadn't been much in the way of thought or reason to what she had done but laying this close to him almost made her forget what had happened.<p>

She had long suspected that Sherlock might have Asperger's, now she was sure that was the case. Everything had gone awkward and even now he didn't seem to know how to react to her closeness, like this was one of those things he would have never needed to know. She remembered Doctor Watson's blog about how he didn't learn anything he didn't actually need to know.

Romance obviously fell into that category, that and most of its subtle nuances. She picked herself up from his shoulder slowly and he glanced down at her. "I shall have John leave this out of the blog," Sherlock chuckled lightly.

Molly sat up. "Yeah, I think that's for the best," she said dryly. Suddenly it seemed like she had made the wrong choice—she was always choosing wrong when it came to Sherlock. She was beginning to see it now, he didn't turn her into a mouse, he turned her into a stupid love sick teenage girl.

"You're upset," he said.

"Don't worry about it," Molly said. "I'm sure it isn't your fault…"

"Don't think it wasn't great…just that I don't think this is the normal procedure—men don't usually receive their first act of fellatio on a hotel bathroom floor after a drug binge…"

"First?"

"Yes, you seemed set on doing it so I wasn't going to spoil your fun," he said.

"My fun?" asked Molly. "That wasn't for me, it was for you!"

"It was brilliant, but I'm afraid I don't know what to do back," he said.

Molly climbed to her feet. "I need you out, out of the bathroom…I just need to take a shower."

Sherlock gathered his things and left the room and Molly sat there on the edge of the tub. Suddenly she was glad it hadn't gone further…his first? That explained the kissing…that explained his reaction to _everything._

And then she remembered.

She started the water in the tub and before she climbed in, she went to the door. "Sherlock…" she said trying to remain calm. "The missing body from the morgue…there were some FBI agents that searched the morgue earlier…we find them and we unravel this whole thing.

Sherlock didn't answer her, but she could hear him moving around the room and despite what happened she was determined to see this through, the sexual exploit was a setback but perhaps it was a minor one and if he could react so nonchalantly to it, she could soldier on and do the same. It's what the English were best at.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>_Thank you for all of the reviews and support; this is kind of that time when I explain a few things that would have spoiled this at the start. This is effectively a character, well a pair of them, having a break down. Stress and the like are things that make people do strange things, so I think this would be possible for Molly if pushed to a brink like that. With everything going on here, I would like to say I have long felt like Sherlock has a high functioning form of Autism and I did research into the sexual relationships of people with it. I wanted to bring two things back that seem to be alluded to a lot, the drug use and the fact that he's a master of disguise. We're going to see more of me borrowing from the Holmes mythos. _


	6. In Which Masks Are Worn

Chapter Six

The flat was a terrible collections of things old and new that seemed to be arranged with little to no regard for reason involved. As they walked through the sitting room, Holly couldn't help but wonder what kind of man this Holmes was. One of the most noteworthy things that she had noticed while searching the room was there were no photographs of anyone, nothing that gave signs of friends and family. Though it was apparent that two men lived here, at least one of them was not sentimental.

The kitchen table was hidden beneath a large lab set up that seemed to have been running some forgotten experiment. Lewis was hovering near the counter top and looking over the things place there. The blokes form New Scotland Yard had been over the flat already though Holly was familiar with their brand of detective work. It was part of the reason that she requested the she and Lewis be allowed to work alone for a moment in the flat.

"When's the last time you investigated something…normal?" Lewis joked.

She shrugged slightly. "Probably over a year ago—I've almost been your partner for a year now," she said.

"You expecting an anniversary present…or are you saying you miss all this?" Lewis stepped into the door way and opened his arms to acknowledge the area around him.

Holly turned to him with a quick smirk. "Oh I know, darling, you came and stole me away from this menial life and showed me a world where I was threatened with death on a near constant basis…however shall I repay you?"

"Hm, we're in London and you're being extra smug, cultural relapse maybe?"

The smirk turned into a full blown smile as Holly continued to inspect the living area. She had grown wary of the wandering through someone's house picking at their belongings. She lifted the Netbook from the desk. "What are we supposed to be looking for again?" she asked. Even before the question was fully past her lips she had answered it herself.

When she lifted the laptop there was a book below it stuffed with papers and written on the corner of one of them was a note with the words _body full of sulfur_. She opened the book up and unfurled the papers inside. They were written in a neat handwriting that she recognized but couldn't place.

"Witnesses said he was in the morgue before we came in and the body vanished right after we left—then we found the Kenyan and there was evidence he had interacted with the lab attended and this Holmes guy…"

"You were right…The lab attendant, the handwriting on this paper is hers…at least partly. I remember it from the papers we were combing through in the mortuary," Holly said. "That's definitely her."

Lewis nodded. "So either they stole our body or they know who took it…"

"Not so sure," Holly said. "Everyone has something to hide but I'm not so sure that Molly registered as the kind of woman who would be some sort of diabolical mastermind who would do this, plus it seems that they're investigating the body itself, they noted down the content of sulfur in the blood stream—that means they found at least part of it."

"They might be slightly closer to the truth, but I think they're more than likely just scratching the surface of it all," Lewis said as he glanced around to make sure none of the police had slipped back in. He drew out a cigarette and slipped it between his lips, lighting it. "Most people's minds will do any and everything they can to deny the truths that we know."

"I can call the brother, Mycroft Holmes," Holly said.

"You knew him?" Lewis asked.

Holly nodded. "He's possibly one of the most important men in the country," Holly said. "If you worked in a highly sensitive area of the government you probably at least had some contact with him. I actually worked directly for him a few times. He is kind of bounces from agencies on a freelance basis; CIA, MI6, MI5, SOCA…wherever he's needed," she explained. "The British government pretty much keeps him busy though."

Holly already had her Blackberry out and in hand dialing numbers away as she spoke. She pressed a Bluetooth headset to her ear and strolled out into the hallway, lifting the crime scene tape as she went.

"You think you're going to reach him?" yelled Lewis out into the hall.

"I'm on the phone, _dear._"

* * *

><p>Brixton wasn't an area of London that Molly ever frequented; in fact she could guess that it might have been a year since she last ventured into it. They were at a small Caribbean eatery where they stuck out like a volcano on the Serengeti. They were the only non-black, non-Caribbean people in the place and while no one was staring them, Molly felt they should be.<p>

Molly stirred at her tea with a thin straw-like stick as she gazed across the table at Sherlock. In the hours since they had woken up on the bathroom floor together barely a word had passed between them. _What did you say to someone whose cock you had in your mouth hours ago?_

What had frightened her more was the fact she was his first. She had never considered it but having had time to sit and spend with him she could easily understand it. He was impossible to relate to and at times sensitivity seemed to elude him. But there were glances of something below the surface, him cuddling her tight on the bathroom floor, or hugging her gently…_or how he reacted after the original incident with Jim. How could she forget that?_

She took a huge sip of her tea, averting her eyes from him. He was sitting cross-legged and facing off to the side, watching the street for something. "What are we doing here?" she asked.

He never turned to face her, she peeked just to make sure. "Sometimes when spies are in the field they have a code, if they need to reach their handler, if they need to be pulled out or make contact…and they utilize this code because no one else would have any way of deciphering the subtleties of the cipher."

"I'm not sure I follow you," she said.

"Watson, I've contacted John," Sherlock said.

"What about the CCTV?"

A sly smile spread over Sherlock's face. "There are none here, the ones that appear to be around," he pointed them all out, "are fake—compliments of my _dear_ brother. This is one of the few places in the city that if need be, you can have absolute, utter privacy."

Molly nodded. "You're nothing if not resourceful," she said. "But wouldn't dragging him into this make matters worse," she said. "I mean you've attempted to turn me ginger and made yourself into a chav…that seems like trouble enough, don't you think?"

"John needs to be made aware of the situation so that if he's asked he can know part of the tale and avoid giving away too much of the situation."

"If they see you or I called him they're going to catch on," Molly said.

Sherlock shook his head. "I made the text from a computer and it doesn't give a location, just the code word, he was supposed to be coming back today so we'll be seeing him here shortly," he glanced at his watch. "Very shortly."

A tall older man with a Caribbean accent passed next to them, slapping Sherlock's shoulder. For a moment Molly tensed and Sherlock looked as if he might deck the man. "Aye mate, that's a fit bird you got there…" he smiled at Sherlock, showing the gold teeth on either side of his mouth as he passed off to the other side of the restaurant.

Molly flashed a smile back as she thought about how they must look to everyone else, like two people of a lesser class enjoying a meal on the wrong side of town. The idea of a disguise was strange, perhaps if you wore a mask too long you could come to believe that's who you were.

When she looked at Sherlock it made her wonder, was it a mask? When Jim had attacked her, when she, Sarah, Watson and Sherlock had come out of that whole mess he did the most peculiar thing. It might have been the first physical sign of affection he had ever given her. It might have been the first time that she actually saw him give anyone any kind of affection. He kissed her on the forehead and told her never to do something like that again. At the time it seemed so out of character. Now she wondered, was this a mask that he had worn for so long that he had just assumed it as his own personality. But despite what Sherlock said, despite how much of an utter ass he might be—there was a heart in there somewhere.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>_On the subject of the FBI in the UK and the like, more will become clear but I do mean FBI and that was intentional. Sometimes agents from friendly nations could be allowed to work inside of another country and this chapter gives some background to Holly and how she came from the UK and worked with the government so this will shed a little light on that aspect of the situation. Sorry again there's not much content here. But I wanted to put this chapter up in case I don't have time to write more on it tomorrow and what I would of wrote will just be chapter seven. _


	7. In Which Toby Will Finally Get Fed

Chapter Seven

**Author's Note: **_This one goes out to the wonderful people of London and the U.K. in general where I have some very dear friends. My prayers and thoughts are with you all. _

* * *

><p>Doctor Watson didn't take long to reach the Caribbean diner, but the time that he did most of the people had cleared out. But when he ambled up he wasn't alone like Molly would have expected. Sarah was with him, a sweet smile plastered over her face. Molly liked Sarah, in fact she wondered how anyone couldn't like Sarah.<p>

"Hello Molly," he said glancing over her hair and makeup with confusion plastered over his face.

"Hi," Molly said with a wave, as she averted her eyes.

"What have you done this time and why are you dressed like Chavs?" asked Watson. "I drove by the flat…place is covered in police and it looks like it did right after the terrorist bombing."

Sherlock sighed. "I was place on house arrest by DI Lestrade and Molly here broke me out—these clothes are our disguises, though they might need to be refined…you spotted me right off."

"That's because you look like a thirty year old bloke with shit coloring in his hair," Watson said, obviously not amused. "And who dyed Molly's hair?"

"I did. There _is_ a case at hand and there's not much time for dawdling…why are you staring at me like I just stole your lolly?"

"How did you let him rope you into this?" asked Watson glancing at Molly who felt like she must have looked like a street walker in the clothes Sherlock had picked.

She pulled her chin down toward her chest. She hadn't thought this would be the reaction but now faced with Watson and Sarah she just blushed. "Well…it was all kind of spur of the moment."

"Do you need help with anything, a place to hide? Some kind of assistance in some in any way?" Sarah was practically volunteering her services.

"Now you're being irrational too?" Watson asked.

Sarah grimaced. "If Molly and Sherlock are both sure this is something big, how can we just ignore it and act like they're both insane?"

For a moment it appeared as if Doctor Watson wanted to say something but he held back on his words. Sherlock spoke up though. "John, what we do need is for you to go back to the flat and act normal."

"Act normal? You need to tell me what the Hell you're investigating that's worth destroying your credibility over."

"That's nonsense, John. I have little to no credibility with them—they've only come to me when they're desperate and by the time they're desperate with this one the case will already be cold," Sherlock said. "The average person would look at what Molly found and completely ignore it, that's what the dimwitted do when presented with something outside of their realm of possibility. Doctor Hooper actually had the sense and decency to call me about the matter and that's why I've dedicated myself to this case, because no one else will."

"What exactly is the case?" asked Sarah curiously as she took a seat.

"Dead men walking around Canary Warf, a murdered Kenyan ambassador, the FBI wandering around Molly's lab an then at a dinner party the other night guess who turned up and poisoned me, I would have been dead if not for Molly," said Sherlock.

Watson seemed both astonished and confused. "You attended a dinner party with Molly?"

"Jim Moriarty, John, it was Moriarty."

"At the dinner party?"

Sherlock held his finger up as he explained. "He slipped a copious amount of motor vehicle coolant into my drink in an attempt to see me disposed of for a short time, Molly rushed me to the hospital and nursed me back to health with her own hands."

Had Sherlock just complimented her twice? It seemed like a very unlikely thing and despite her anger at him for the night before she couldn't help but smile inside. He at least acknowledged her as smart and capable, unfortunately to him smart and capable just meant that she was had known well enough to come and get him when she noticed a problem. Molly still had the consciousness of mind to make a comment. "He should still be in the hospital, by the way—I've told him more than once," she managed.

"There's much more at hand here than my mere health," he said with a gust of excitement. "John, you must return to Baker's street and act as if you've not seen me and nothing has happened. If asked about the delay between your arrival and your return, tell them you had ventured to Sarah's for an afternoon romp or whatever it is you do…"

Sarah looked slightly shocked.

"Molly and I will be continuing the hunt, there's something that has bothered me for a while about all of this and with the way our specimens keep vanishing I fear we won't have another until whoever it is that's doing this makes us another," Sherlock said.

"Do you think it involves," John leaned forward, "Moriarty?"

"Of course, he wouldn't have been there that night and this has all of the sinister makings of something that he would have his hands in," said Holmes.

Doctor Watson sighed. "Alright, I will…I'll do this but I'm going to have to bring Sarah with me," he said.

Before Sherlock could raise a protest, Molly cut in. "Doctor Watson, will you and Sarah please feed my cat Toby—he's been left alone with no one but Miss Hudson to look after him and he might need the attention…" she said.

Sarah looked at John and nodded.

"If dead men are really moving around…what do you think it is, Sherlock?" asked Sarah.

"A parlor trick, some clever alibi for a crime that I've yet to find the true nature of, I don't have all of the details yet," Sherlock said. "All shall be made clear in time," he said.

A smile spread over Sarah's face. "Well you're very certain of yourself, so that should help—all we need to do is feign ignorance?"

"Yes, I'm sure it shouldn't be too hard for you," Sherlock said with a biting sarcasm. Molly couldn't be sure if Sarah had really detected it, if she did there wasn't an ounce of care in her expression.

Doctor Watson pulled Sarah close to him. "You'll contact us if you find something out?"

"I can try my best to keep you posted, John, but there's the simple matter of the Police—I'll need to avoid them as much as possible."

"And what's to keep them from dragging you off to the prison at Winson Green?" asked Watson.

"They need me, as I said, and I will have solved a crime, thus proving the necessity of my freedom," Sherlock explained.

Sarah stepped close to Watson draping her arms over his shoulders and down onto his chest. "Come on, dear, he knows what he's doing…we just need to trust him," she said just before she stepped back away from him to let him rise, her auburn hair had dangled down into her face now and she was forced to brush it back away from her eye. "Nice color," she smiled coyly at Molly, pointing to her own hair.

* * *

><p>Rumbles of thunder were at Sophie's back as she made her way up the block toward her house, she couldn't afford to stop somewhere out of the way for cover and she'd left her umbrella on the bus. If she was late today her mother would be pissed. She was pissed last time, this time she'd be grounded for sure. It was supposed to be family night, her brother's turn to pick where they went and what they did and while she didn't hate these outings…she rather enjoyed them.<p>

But just before she had headed out Liam stopped her because he wanted to ask her out and that turned into a whole little ordeal, one where he actually kissed her. Sure when she had called Martha and Liz on the ride home they'd acted like it wasn't a big deal, but in actuality it was the biggest deal. The best thing ever. When she got a moment she'd have to pull her mum off to the side and tell her.

_If she wasn't grounded._

The house was in sight and she could see her parent's Vauxhall Insignia parked on the street in front of their house. She raced through the rain toward front door, not daring to pull her phone out and check the time, mostly because it would slow her down but also because of the rain. Her thick, brown hair clung to the sides of her pale freckled face and her clothes were soaked through and through.

When she finally hit the first riser of the steps leading up to the door, she found the house open. "Mum?" she called as she stepped inside, something had been cooking. She searched the wall for the clock near the door, one minute to spare! "Mum, sorry if I'm late," she feigned remorse.

The entry foyer was wet and there were muddy boot tracks leading through the center of the house. "Mum? Dad?" she called. "I got held up because…I needed to talk to someone," she said.

Sophie ascended the stairs two at a time and rushed into her room to strip out of the cold, wet clothes and praying her mother didn't think that the boot tracks Owen and Dad left got blamed on her somehow. Owen had a way of getting her blamed for _everything_.

She slipped into a light blue jumper and a dry skirt and knickers and headed back down the stairs. "I'm ready—I'm—" she hadn't bothered to look before but when she turned the corner into the living room she found her father laying on his back, his chest burned through and blackened. Owen was near him, his arms singed off at the elbow and his tiny face scorched. She went to scream as she traced the path of destruction to her mother's nude form slumped over the couch arm face down.

A man in a black coat with his face covered was behind her mother and when she regained any sort of awareness there were tears streaming out of her eyes, obstructing her vision. She was backing away and slipped in the water left in the entryway of the house.

The black-clad man ambled forward at a calm pace with his gloved hand stretched out toward her. "Don't worry, we're not here to hurt you," his voice was little more than a grumble through his eyeless mask. She choked back the tears…maybe he couldn't see well?

Sophie backpedaled and climbed to her feet and snatched at the door side table for the keys to the car, the door was right there and she was through it in seconds. Bolting back out into the rain she pressed the key remote and practically dove into the car. She wasn't old enough to drive yet, she still had three years*. Still the car started and in a panic she backed out and clumsily shifted the car into first gear, starting off down the street. In theory she should know how the car works but in her current state she didn't have time to think, time to self-teach…

_Mum…_

_Dad…_

_Owen…_

She made a wide arc turn out onto the cross street with the blare of another car's horn ringing in her eyes. Sophie didn't even look back, she didn't even notice it. Her eyes were locked on the road and her hands griped the wheel right, the car reacted differently than she thought it should have, subtle movements actually mattered. Her eyes glazed over and watering, she just knew she had to put space between herself and the house, she had to ring the police or somebody.

_Why had this happened? Why had they murdered them?_

She couldn't believe it, the denial made it easier to function and yet she had seen it. Smelled the cooked flesh. She struggled to shift the car into third gear and didn't slow down, skidding through a turn to another chorus of horns that she ignored. The road was wet and the cars around her kicked up a spray of water from the road that blinded her. She groped at the side of the wheel, frustrated that she couldn't find the wipers.

In the search for it she caught a puddle the wrong way and there was a slight squeal and the tires left the ground for a brief moment and the car was sideways. She screamed out as the wheels jumped the curb and was sent into the side of a building.

She felt her body jerk one way and suddenly she was engulfed in darkness.

* * *

><p>They had chosen to meet Mycroft at the Starbucks on Kingsway, she knew that it wasn't out of the way for where he used to operate and she didn't really want to feel like she was taking him away from his work.<p>

Lewis returned from inside with their drinks and placed hers down on the table in front of her. "This coffee tastes like ass," he said.

"You should have got tea," she mused.

"I should have kept my black ass in the states," Lewis said. "You want to know why I left DC after academy and came back to Texas? Because its cold and wet and the food was bad…remind you of somewhere?"

"Don't you have any other complaints to make?" Holly asked. "I mean look around, London's a beautiful city with a lot to offer, if you'd just glance around instead of bitching all the time," she added. Lewis scooted close to her, the arm of his jacket brushing against hers and she exhaled sharply. "Did you find a place for us to stay yet?" she asked. "Somewhere a little…more accommodating?"

"Problem, Holly?" Lewis asked as he lifted the lid of his coffee to inspect it.

She kicked his leg. "What are you looking for; I'm trying to discuss something with you!"

"I think something died in my cup…or they spit in it…"

Holly brought her tea to her face, sniffed it and took a drink. Then she dipped her hands back into her pockets to wait for Lewis to finish his inspection of the coffee. He was using his stir stick to search for anything. "Lewis look at me," she said, her green eyes waiting for his.

"Huh?"

"I brought that little outfit the other night from the mall…the one you told me looked…" Holly leaned forward, her eyes searching in either direction for anyone within earshot. "…the one you told me looked _sexy_…" she whispered. Lewis had always bragged about how he loved the way her accent curled around the word sexy.

Lewis put the coffee down and smiled slightly. "I'll find us something not in the American Embassy," he said.

"Thank you—Mister Holmes!" Holly hadn't had time to notice him there and she hoped he hadn't heard what they were talking about. Mycroft was slightly older with a pristinely cut suit. His hair dipped down into a receding widow's peak over his forehead and he looked like any of the men down in Canary Warf might or even on Wall Street.

Lewis rose from his chair to shake Mycroft's hand. "Special Agent Lewis Reynolds, Holly's been telling me about you Mister Holmes."

"Please, call me Mycroft," he said. "And surely you didn't expect me to not know who you were, Reynolds. You're a decorated military serviceman and one of the best snipers in the world rumor has it."

"I like him already," Lewis said to Holly with a smile.

Holly stepped in with a smirk and Mycroft kissed her on either cheek. "Look at you, Agent Prescott now! I've heard good things about you, Love. It's nice to see you finally getting a chance to shine."

Holly blushed and it was only made worse by Lewis putting his hand on her shoulder. "She really is shining too, she's even better than she looked on paper," Lewis said.

"Please...you're making me blush," Holly said.

A beautiful looking brunette with a Blackberry clasped between her hands sidled up to Mycroft. Holly had to roll her eyes as the woman stood there, surprised to see that she was even still around…just the thought of her name pissed Holly off.

"Afternoon, Holly…"

"I'm shocked to see _you_ stuck around," Holly said.

"I'm still in the same position…have to handle all Mister Mycroft's affairs," the woman said.

_That wasn't the only position Holly had heard she was in…_

Holly stepped back to her seat at the table. "Could you have a seat Mycroft? We just need to ask you if you can help us find your brother," she said.

"What's he done now?"

"He's apparently escaped the Police and he is into something a little above…even your pay grade," Holly said with a forced reverence.

Mycroft laughed. "What's that?"

Lewis rubbed his hand through the stubble on his face. "You seem to know a lot Mycroft, have you ever heard of Project Eden?"

"I've heard the word uttered, but it was all just whispers, I know that it's something connected to the strange happenings around the world a year back," Mycroft said.

Lewis looked to Holly. "How much should we tell him?"

"I trust him," Holly said. "We're part of the Eden unit, we operate beneath the umbrella of the FBI or CIA, whatever we have to do to pass for normal. And we're basically there to police things that are something other than Human."

"I figured as much," Mycroft said. "The uttering seemed to be in regard to some of the things we came across, when you work as high up as me you see things in reports that shouldn't be possible."

"Sometimes they're the real deal," Lewis said going into his coat pocket. He drew out a clip of ammunition and ejected the top bullet. "See that? Silver—there's only two reasons a man would carry one of those: Either he's got a ridiculous amount of cash to throw around or he's hunting something that requires a bullet that has stopping power against Infernal Blood."

Mycroft slipped a mint into his mouth, though his expression didn't change. "So my brother has found something that's involved with this case and he's on the hunt for the solution…that's all he cares about."

"Do you know where to find him?" asked Holly.

"What is it that he found exactly?"

"A body with sulfur inside of it, the body of a man who had been walking around dead and going to work like nothing was wrong…" said Lewis.

The woman behind her Blackberry spoke up. "There were three dead bodies found with sulfur in them a few hours ago. A young girl, Sophie Bolger came home to find her parents and brothers murdered, burned right through and the mother raped…there was sulfur on the bodies…"

"How do you know this?" asked Lewis.

"What? You thought I was playing Word Mole back here?" the woman said.

Holly grabbed Mycroft's arm. "You need to get us to Sherlock if you know where he is and more importantly right now you need to help us get to that girl, if she saw them she won't live much longer."

"I would have to say she's to be pretty safe with the Met for the time being…" Mycroft said.

"No," Lewis said. "She will only be safe with us because what's hunting her could easily get inside of Scotland Yard."

"What's hunting her?" asked Mycroft.

"Demons," Holly said.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>_Just wanted to make some quick notes here about where the * is. For those American readers the legal driving age in England as far as I know is 18 and that's why I kind of threw that little star there and the like. I think that I learn more about the English and the U.K. in general from my writing than most Americans would ever know. _


	8. In Which Lewis and Holly Steal the Show

Chapter Eight

* * *

><p>It was apparent that Lewis had never laid eyes on a car like the Maybach Landaulet. To her knowledge they didn't even have the brand in America and in the UK it was revered as one of those cars made for the extremely wealthy, especially this model. The car had picked them up to take them back to New Scotland Yard and a second one had been there to take Mycroft's assistant to do some checking into the whereabouts of Sherlock Holmes.<p>

Holly found herself pressed into the rather spacious backseat between Lewis and Mycroft. She watched as Lewis bounced up and down on the seat, pressing his hands down into the plush leather. He looked around the interior with awe plastered on his face.

"Look how roomy it is in here," he said. "How did the Germans do this?"

Holly cracked a smile. "Those bloody Germans," she said with feigned enthusiasm. "I tell you, they're building TARDISs over there…"

The comment went unnoticed or Lewis ignored her, one of the two. Mycroft leaned over to her. "You should tell him about the roof," he whispered.

"Lewis, darling? The roof in back here opens too…separately from the front one," she said.

"We need to do that," he said.

"It's raining," Holly said pressing her hand against his chest to steady him it was only after a moment that she could feel the glance Mycroft was giving her and retracted her hand. The man had known her before America and he knew about her and the touching thing…Holly hated physical contact—despised it.

Though over the years she had gotten more used to it from randomers, she couldn't really say it was something she would typically initiate. But if Mycroft had seen her, well of course he had seen her, how could he have missed it. _This was Mycroft_.

Now that he had seen her he would know something was up, he would figure it out and truthfully she could feel him scanning over them, sorting everything out in that frantic way he had. Holly fell silent as Lewis continued to comment and critique the brilliance of the car. She didn't dare cast her eyes anywhere near Mycroft until she heard his phone go off and he let out a heavy sigh.

"What…?" Holly asked in a small voice.

"There's been a bombing of some kind," Mycroft said. "Someone's attacked Scotland Yard. It seems to be the work of terrorists, there were recent credible threats gathered by Israeli intelligence about a Iranian funded…"

Lewis had his gun out already checking the ammunition in it, he slipped it back into his holster as he interrupted Mycroft. "This was coincidence you think? I'd bet you this car for mine that the _things _that attacked the police station weren't Muslim or even human…"

"Do you think they came for her?" asked Holly.

"Yeah," said Lewis. "And they're being so apparent with it, they're so right in the open," he added.

As they neared the site the smoke filled the air and there were police barricades all around. When the car stopped at one of them, Holly couldn't tell what was said by the driver when he opened the window, but they were immediately let through to the inside of the blast zone. Lewis was the first out of the car and he pulled Holly to her feet. A scorched body was being dragged out past them as they started for the door. The glass on the front of the building had been shattered away and much of it was broken and destroyed.

Lewis led the way inside, making his way around medical personnel and crumbled debris. "They could have done this without all of this…they wanted to make a point," Lewis said.

Holly and Mycroft rushed to keep up with him as he tore through the rubble and into the building. The smell of burnt flesh made Holly wretch and she paused briefly to cover her mouth. "God…"

"Are you okay?" asked Mycroft.

Holly nodded. "You would have thought the building would collapse from all of the damage."

"Old girl's built better than that," Mycroft said.

They made their way back into an office like area and the carnage seemed to come in at full force. There were bodies strewn about the floor; some of them burned beyond recognition and others still moving, barely alive. The paramedics were carting them away as fast as they could but there were so many.

Holly kept her distance, staying closer to the door in light of what she might see if she got closer. Lewis walked the room glancing around at the destruction in the office. "This wasn't a bomb, it was a Firestarter," Lewis said.

"A what?" asked Mycroft.

"Notice how there's no fires still burning and it seems that there's no signs that they were put out with water?" asked Lewis. Mycroft nodded. "A creature that can control fire broke in here and did this, it didn't use any accelerants or anything and the fire was mentally controlled. When the creature had no more need for it, it put them out."

"When you say creature you mean…" Mycroft was cut off by Holly.

"Demons."

A sigh escaped Mycroft. "I won't get used to saying that," he said. "And I suppose that we can't let the BBC pass along the real story," he said.

"Go with the terrorist angle, gives you times to work out what to do next," said Lewis. "Can't tell you how many times we've done it back in the states."

Holly felt her hands tighten at her sides. "I would hardly think that casting blame on an already hated minority is the right thing to do in this case," she said.

"Blame who you want, but if the public finds out that a Demon did this," Lewis glanced around as if to check and make sure the paramedics wouldn't hear him. "If they find out _what_ did this the whole planet will be in a panic."

And even though she wanted to prove him wrong, Holly knew he had it right. There was no way they could expose this world to the rest of the people in London and the world and not make it the biggest news ever. Mycroft sighed deeply. "I'll work on the cover story, but how do we find the little girl?"

"I have an idea about where to begin," Lewis said. "Holly and I will check it out, you just need to get back to us with the information on where your brother is," he said.

* * *

><p>Molly stared at reflection in the surface of a puddle that had gathered on the ground near the part of the docks they were searching. Underneath all of the makeup and the dyed red hair it was hard for her to believe she was the same person and it wasn't because of the stuff covering her skin and head. An entire new side of her had welled up within her over the past few days and it was a struggle for her to find out how this related to the Molly Hooper that was.<p>

Everything she had known about herself was being tested and changed. If things kept this break neck pace would she be able to tell who she was in a week's time? In a month? Would she even be able to call herself Molly?

Thinking back, five days ago she was trying her best to avoid leaving her flat, even if that meant not eating. Everything paled in comparison to laying in bed and cuddling Toby with a DVD of _Glee _or _Hope Springs_. Life and her emotions seemed so complex back then, though now when she thought about it she was living with the volume on her life turned down. She wasn't living at all.

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but Sherlock was as athletic as could be when scaling fences and going over into large shipping crates. But they had been at this for a while and she wondered if this time, perhaps, Sherlock had been wrong. Statistically speaking he had a dangerously high percentage of right guesses, she figured that this might have been one of those times that Doctor Watson was talking about where he missed some little detail and was off or where there were two possible answers and he'd rolled the dice and picked the wrong one. Then from somewhere around the nearby building she heard a voice. Sherlock jumped down from his perch. "Eureka! This way…" he was pulling her along by the arm, practically dragging her between the shipping crates.

As they made their way down the corridor of steel boxes, Molly was beginning to pick up on pieces of the conversation. There were two men talking and though she couldn't see them she could guess that Sherlock had from the way he was leading her with such determination. "…if they blame terrorists they might raise the national alert status, that would screw over the shipping…" said the first man.

"That's for true, when's the next shipment?"asked the second man.

"No telling till they tell us."

"The sooner the last one is in the better."

"We don't even know what it is that they're bringing."

Molly whispered in Sherlock's ear. "What are they talking about?"

"Not sure yet," Sherlock said.

"If we believe the stories 'bout this guy who's setting this up—e's some sort of shadow or sommat…no one ever seen him…"

"Moriarty," Sherlock whispered. "It has to be him, he was having something shipped into the harbor here, more than likely whatever it is would be gone by now because there would be some risk of someone finding the contents."

"Jim's behind this?" asked Molly. "How is he behind everything?" Sherlock was dragging her along.

Sherlock froze. "Someone's coming, we need to hide," there was a nearby shipping crate that was cracked open on the side and they dashed inside to hide in the darkness. They peaked out through the crack of the door to see a man walking up the corridor toward the metal building at the edge of the docks. There was something in his hand and Molly had trouble making it out at first but she could definitely see what it was now.

She watched quietly with Sherlock as the man passed from view and didn't need to be shushed or told to remain quiet when a few moments later she heard the reverberating sound of two gun shots go off ending the conversation of the two men. The night air was still and there was more movement, the sound of a car engine coming closer through the darkness and its lights illuminated a sliver between the cracks of the shipping crates.

A moment later two men emerged with a tied up teenage girl suspended between them. She didn't seem to be struggling but that didn't keep them from being far rougher with her than there was need to. Her mouth was taped shut with a wide, silvery strip of duct tape and even at this distance there was terror in her eyes. They were taking her toward the building where the men and been and when they neared it she began to scream, more than likely she had spotted the dead man.

"We have to help her, Sherlock…" Molly said.

"We're going to need your gun or you will rather."

"Me? What do you want me to do?"

Sherlock was bathed in the light pouring through the crack in the door as he stepped out in front of her. "I need for you to count to sixty after I leave this crate and fire the gun off into the air, wait here after that…"

Before she could raise a protest he was off out of the door. She did as asked and waited one minute and fired it in the air, then she stepped back into the darker recesses of the crate. Two men raced past and Molly stepped to the front of the crate and watched them go, then she heard the engine of that car fire up. Thinking that she needed to see exactly what Sherlock was doing she slipped out into the isle. Her heart was racing and just for her own safety she carried the gun down at her side. Molly's whole arm was shaking.

Molly checked at her back to make sure that no one was coming and then she rushed toward the building. Sherlock was getting out of a car and rushing up to the door. Just as the third man, the one who had brought the gun in the first time approached the door Sherlock kicked the door back into him and knocked him back against the wall. Molly was racing to meet him, trying to see if she could assist in any way. By the time she got to the door, Sherlock was ripping the tape off of the girl's face.

He crossed the room and pressed his foot down against the throat of the shooter. Then he glanced back at the girl where she sat crying and then to Molly. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "I told you to wait at the crate."

"Stop trying to be such a loaner. I came to help you because I was worried," Molly went to help the teen up. "What's your name sweetheart?" she asked.

The girl stared up at her, her big brown eyes welling up with tears. She had the hardest time bringing herself to speak and stuttered to get the words out. "M-m-my name is so-so-Sophie," she managed finally.

When she looked back Sherlock was holding the man at the neck, cutting off his air supply. "Get her to the car, we've got to go now—the plan I had was ruined when you decided to deliberately come gallivanting in here," Sherlock said.

Molly led Sophie out to the car, though the bindings didn't make it any easier. Sherlock was right behind them, she and Sophie took the front seats and he was left to pile into the back. "Drive, just drive and don't look back," Sherlock ordered her.

* * *

><p>The business park of Canary Warf housed the tallest buildings in the city of London, though Lewis could honestly say that he hadn't been into this part of the city on his previous visits. Holly was the only way that he was able to navigate the streets. They had spent the last hour and a half searching for any sign of the girl who had gone missing. The entire time Holly was searching for any kind of answer to who this child might be and of what importance she was to the Demons.<p>

A deluge had come in and slowed their protest, Holly spent most of the time they were searching on her phone scouring the internet and making calls. She was wrapping away on her phone's keyboard as rapidly as she could. "Why are you so worried about this right now, when we find her we can ask her if she's seen anything or if she's had any weird things happen around her," Lewis said.

"The girl probably won't be able to sit and answer any of the questions we're looking at right now. She's already terrified and grieving. Do we need to add to that with inquiries?" asked Holly. "I just think we should check into this because if we find out why they took her it may very well lead us to her."

"They needed a sacrifice, they were trying to get a hostage to hold over someone's head…what are the reasons that demons usually snatch someone up?" asked Lewis.

Holly sighed. "Those are all of them but at the same time if she was just a sacrifice or a hostage...then why go through the huge amount of trouble to keep this specific girl," Holly said.

"Maybe she's…you know, like you."

"What do you mean, _like you_?" Holly said, her nostrils flaring up enough to let him know she was serious.

"You know…" Lewis said.

"I think I get it but please enlighten me," Holly said.

_He had surely said the wrong thing. _Lewis didn't know what he was thinking saying what he was, but he knew now it was definitely not the thing to say to her. Luckily his phone rang, he drew it from his pocket and glanced down at the screen. "I have to take this, its Ashley," he said.

"You do that," Holly said. "I think I might make a call meself."

"Hey, Sweetness—everything okay?" Lewis asked.

The high pitched voice of his daughter Ashley rang through from the other side of the phone quite loud. "Dad, aren't you coming home tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sorry—no, it looks like I will have to stay a while longer," Lewis said. "Holly and I have been a little busy, we're onto something big I think. How's your sister?"

"Acting like a baby, she's crying about you not being here _all the time now_," Ashley said.

"She's scared because…well because of your mother being gone and all, look just be nice to Penny, Ashley. She's the only sister you've got and she needs you to look out for her," Lewis said. "You two be good for Aunt Meredith, okay?"

"Yes, Dad. Love you."

"Is Penny there?"

"She's not home yet, but I can call you back later when she's here."

"Okay, you do that, love you and tell your sister I love her too."

"I will, tell Holly that I said hi," with that Ashley hung up.

Holly was still nearby talking on the phone, Lewis closed the gap between them. "Ashley says hi," Lewis said.

Holly nodded and held her finger up to quiet him. "Okay, thank you Dena. Is there anything else you need to know…okay call me back when you find anything."

There was a sudden chime from Lewis's phone. He held it up to see the message.

Sherlock found the girl

She's safe, tracking him

-Mycroft

"It's a message from Mycroft, how did he get my number?" Lewis said.

"He does that."

"Well anyway, he says the girl is safe…we need to regroup, before morning we should be ready to go after Sherlock Holmes," Lewis said.

"Any idea where he is?"

Lewis shook his head. "She's with Sherlock, so she's safe for now."

Holly sighed. "If we don't figure out why they want her she won't be safe for long, they'll try again," she said.

Lewis ran his fingers down through the side of her hair. "Let's worry about that if it comes up, we need to get a little rest in before we're out chasing this guy around more…who did you call?"

"Dena, I'm having her hack some public records pertaining to the girl," Holly said.

"Why not ask Mycroft, I'm sure he's capable of getting that."

"Yes, but the less he knows we know the better, a Demon can get into almost anyone, except us so when Dena calls back whatever she has to tell us is between us for now—we don't know who it could jump in and pump for information," Holly said.

Lewis had to admit, the short time they had spent together was making her good at planning ahead. When she came up with things like this it did make him, though he was afraid to admit it, a little proud. He grasped her at the shoulder, lightly and smiled. "What do you say we get out of here, treat ourselves to some room service on the United States government?"

"Oo, I hope we don't bankrupt them," Holly said.

"That's not funny," Lewis said.

"I beg to differ."

* * *

><p>"It's okay," Molly comforted her. "We're not going to hurt you."<p>

"Who are these men…why are they…" Sophie's words disintegrated into an indistinguishable mess in lieu of her tears.

They had made their way back to the hotel that they'd sneaked into before, only this time paying for their stay.

"We don't know who they are or why they attacked your parents, but we can guess who they work for," Sherlock seemed somewhat excited, like the anticipation was dragging him forward, his very words had a bite to them.

Molly whispered toward him. "Could you try and show a decent level of sympathy?" Molly asked.

"Not sure why I should—how could I know if the girl's parents were murderers or thieves or whatever else, I can't cry over every person that…"

Sherlock was cut off by a wrenching scream from the girl, she dug her fingers into the sides of her stomach as if in pain and then leapt up from where she was sitting and rushed into the bathroom. Molly just glared at him. "How can you be the insensitive and _hateful_?"

"I'm not doing anything. How can you spend so much of your time worrying about every other human being's problems?" asked Sherlock.

"I suppose you are better than everyone else because you never worry?" Molly shouted. "Well you bloody sure worried about me that time—you comforted me before—you worried about Doctor Watson—"

"And you worry too much about being prim and proper, you've known John for almost a year now and you're still calling him Doctor Watson!"

"Look, you haven't earned the right to shout at me…I've put up with you enough and I've made damn sure to show you respect and other things and you shy away from me every time that you get the chance. I just don't see how _anyone _can put up with you and if I didn't love you so goddamn much it would be a lot easier to just leave you be…" Molly hadn't even noticed what she said and in the next moment she didn't know what she was doing.

"What did you…?" before Sherlock could get the phrase out, Molly launched herself at him and bit his arm, hard. "What the Hell is your problem? You bit me!"

"Sorry, but you earned it!" Molly stood there, her chest flaring up and down in anger and tears streaming over her cheeks. The makeup Sherlock had caked on her was running already and she let out a stuttering breath. "I'm not brave or a detective and I was stupid to think that spending time with you or putting my mouth on your cock or any of those other things I did was going to make you notice me…"

"And you say you love me?" Sherlock asked.

It dawned on Molly then, she had said just that.

"Why would you love me?" asked Sherlock. "You'd want to date me like I am now? You'd want to spend time with me in a relationship capacity and go to dinner outings and the park and engage in sexual congress and all of the other silly things that couples are supposed to do?"

Molly chuckled. "Did you call it _sexual congress_?"

Sherlock glanced toward the window for a long time, as if something out in the streets of London were going to give him some clue as to what he needed to say next. He turned back to stare at Molly. "I don't know anything about love or women other than the obvious, I don't know how to be in a relationship—that's not my area—these cases, these problems, these puzzles, the game…this is what I do, every moment of every day and that is all I have to offer. It doesn't require that I understand emotion or that I'm sensitive and it doesn't require deduction…"

Pushing herself up onto the balls of her feet to kiss his cheek she smiled. "How can you be so smart and so bloody stupid?"

"What?"

"All of life requires deduction; you've just missed the more subtle things. Somewhere in there you know what to say to that girl in the bathroom…and you know just what I'm thinking most of the time," Molly said as she backed away from him.

Sherlock thought for a moment and without a word he walked to the bathroom door and opened it to find Sophie sitting on the tile floor in a heap. He glanced down at her and then back at Molly. "Sophie," he started before turning back to her. "I didn't know your family but I have to apologize about what I said earlier—but there is something I can promise you, I will find the people who are doing this and you will be safe again and your family will be able to…rest in peace."

The girl glanced up at him and she sniffled, wiping her eyes. Molly felt like she might cry now and there was something else, seeing him vow that to the girl, seeing him show more of himself like this made her—well she didn't want to beat around the bush in her own mind—it made her extremely horny and she didn't really know what to say or do now. She hadn't felt like this for a long time and she felt the need to just leave the room, get away.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" Sherlock said. "She would probably feel more comfortable with you?"

Molly nodded. "I'm shit with children," Molly said. "Like really you have no idea," she said.

"I couldn't imagine anyone more unfit than myself," said Sherlock.

"Point taken."

* * *

><p>When he had talked about room service back at the hotel, Holly knew that it meant a little more than just food but she couldn't really see herself refusing him and she had actually tempted him before with that offer to wear the lingerie. It took them sometime to get their things moved from the US Embassy to a hotel, but almost immediately after they had finished moving and eating they were doing just what Holly had expected.<p>

After what must have been about forty five minutes or so, she was completely spent and had taken to laying against the edge of the bed near the bedside table with her back exposed. Lewis's fingers ghosted over the bumps of her spine and while it both tickled and excited her she didn't dare lift her head to look back at him or think about doing anything else.

"You look like you're thinking too hard," Lewis said as his hand worked its way up into her brown locks.

"I'm just," she sighed. "I guess I'm tired is all, I feel like I used up way too much energy today."

"I'll bet you do," Lewis said in a tone that meant he was trying to insinuate something.

"Shut up, I don't mean like that," Holly said. "Hey you better enjoy this while you can," she said using her hand to acknowledge her body. "It's about to be hands off for a few days—you know it's about to be _Shark Week_…"

Lewis shook his head. "You need to stop calling it that—you're a grown woman. Just say you're on your period," he kissed her on the side of the cheek.

"Feels weird to say it," said Holly. "I could actually call it _Having the Painters In_ or _Falling to the Communists_…"

"The only acceptable one, as far as I'm concerned is _Riding the Cotton Pony_," Lewis wrapped his arm around her bare stomach and pulled her back to him, suddenly she was self conscious about where his hand was—did he feel any fat there, would he notice she had gained a slight amount of weight?

Holly shrugged the thought away. "It's nice to know you're not nervous about the whole…menstruation thing," she said.

He pulled her back against him, cupping her chest and kissing at her neck. "The way you said _menstruation thing_ makes it sound like you've got an angry Aztec blood god between your legs…" even as he spoke, his other hand was snaking around her thigh and her whole body tensed.

"That comment is not so funny when you've fought a _literal _Aztec blood god," Holly said. If he did what she thought he was going to do, she'd just turn to putty again. And though she liked it, she hated how little control she had with him; she hated how perfectly the image of a puppet fit her in these moments.

The Katy Perry melody of her phone ringing broke the tension in the room and she pulled away to grab it. "It could be important," she said.

"Teenage Dream? Really? Is that a Brazilian you've got there or should I just drag my ass back down to Scotland Yard and let the Bobbies slap the cuffs on me right now," Lewis held his hands up as if they were bound to one another.

Holly sighed. "It's a decent song…and no one calls them Bobbies anymore—you should watch more things from contemporary England and stop living in the 1960s," Holly said. She thumbed at the phone and the screen lit up, it was a text and the contents made her freeze. "Shit—I found it," Holly said.

"What?"

"Molly Hooper. That's the link, the Doctor from the Mortuary…" Holly was practically screaming when she said it.

"Still not following you? Did you find Sherlock and Molly?"

"No, you git. When Doctor Molly Hooper was sixteen she had a baby—embarrassed, her family must have put her up for adoption and that baby is Sophie. Demons can sense blood relationships—it all makes sense, Sophie is Molly's daughter!"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>_Sure that you never saw this coming, hope that it makes sufficient sense, this is the way I've been going with this the whole time and I'm rather happy I've been able to lead you all this far. I will try and get to the next chapter as soon as I can. I wanted this to be long to make sure I made up for the lost time I spent not making new stuff for you all._


	9. In Which Shots Are Fired

Chapter Nine

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>_ This chapter has made me wish Holly and Molly weren't so close in name, the thing is that Holly is my character from other works. So I need to be really careful not to mess up and mix them up._

* * *

><p>The room had fallen into a silent kind of darkness that only the street lamps, filtered slightly by the curtains, dared to break. The night was cool and damp and everything smelt of fresh rain, Sophie was still hidden in the bathroom, her sobs and cries had stopped and she had seemingly fallen asleep in the tub.<p>

Every so one of them would break the silence. This time it was Sherlock's turn. "You're shit with kids you said, but isn't that what you want?" he asked. "I never figured you for the domesticated type, but you dream of it all…a house in Chiswick, your husband drinking tea over the morning paper and a pair of cheerful children dashing about?"

"Coffee…" she said coarsely.

"What?"

"My husband, he'd drink coffee in the mornings," Molly drew herself against her side of the bed further, her bare legs tucked beneath her in much the same way a duck's would be. Her eyes flicked to one side, though there would be no way to see him. She was facing the window and eh was facing the wall opposite it.

"I see," Sherlock said in that quiet, rich tone he often had.

Molly sighed and they lay there in silence for what could have been a minute or it could have been an hour or more. The room was still and in the mounting stillness there was a question burning in her mind.

"Sherlock…have you ever…been in love?" Molly asked.

There was no answer or sound, she lifted herself from the sheets to find him sprawled out with his lips parted. Sherlock was sleep.

"Dammit," Molly muttered as she fluffed her pillow and flopped against it.

She lay there motionless, fighting the urge to just roll over and wake him when there was something outside, a shadow on the roof. But it didn't seem to be an innocent shadow. She peered at it for a moment and called to him.

"Sherlock…"

Once again there was no answer.

"Sherlock…there's someone on the roof!" she said in an excited whisper.

The figure outside was squatting down, manipulating something in his hands, Molly kept still. And Sherlock made no move to answer.

"Sherlock Holmes!" she said louder now.

The bed rocked as Sherlock rolled back toward her, his body hitting hers and both of them going to the floor. There was a series of loud cracks; the sound of breaking glass filled the room and splattered wood and plaster rained down onto the top of their heads. Sherlock was moving for the gun on the bedside table more shots exploded through the room and he dropped back to the floor.

It felt like an eternity. Sherlock was pressed between her legs holding her to the floor, the patterns of their breathing syncing in the panic. He glared down at her. "Are you okay?"

"I think a bit of the wood from the wall struck me," Molly's voice was ragged, she hadn't realized her own pain. When she looked off to the side she saw why. Her left shoulder had been torn open at the crest of its curve. Sherlock covered the blood with his hand, putting pressure on it.

"One of the rounds must have scraped past you," he said.

"The shooter from before?" asked Molly weakly.

Sherlock just stared down at her.

* * *

><p>Holly's senses were engorged in what he was doing, until suddenly she was ripped away from the sensation and snapped back to the real world. Lewis's hands had griped her waist and he had been kissing his way down the side of her neck when he suddenly stopped.<p>

"Did you hear that?" he asked, his face was shrouded by shadows.

"Mm, what was it?"

"Someone's shooting a rifle," Lewis said. "It's close."

"They're not shooting _at_ us are they?" asked Holly as she reached back between them brought her fingers together scratching at the skin of his stomach. And then there was another series of shots and she heard them. "They are close," she said.

Lewis bounded from the bed and was throwing his clothes on, he tossed her the dress she had been wearing and didn't bother trying to button his shirt. In socks, slacks, a t-shirt and with his gun in hand; Lewis bounded from the room.

Holly slipped back into her dress and charged out after him, with a pair of heels dangling off her fingers. The hotel felt like a maze of twisting halls as they charged around the building looking for where the shots had come through and they found it only a few turns up from where they slept.

Lewis ran his hand along a cracked line in the plaster were bullets had tried to punch through. "Here it is," he said.

People were stepping out into the hallway now, glancing about and trying to figure out just what it was that happened. Holly jogged past them. "Stand back!" she shouted. Holly pounded into the door and knocked it clean in, it would have been for any normal woman her size.

…_but Holly wasn't normal…_

Lewis stepped into the room behind her, training the gun on the window at the far side of the room. He charged over the glass covered carpet and out to the window's edge. He must have seen someone on top of the opposite building because he fired out into the night five times. The gun's explosive sound reverberated around the room.

When she entered the room Holly she hadn't even noticed the man and woman cowering on the floor in the corner. She stared at them through the darkness. "Sherlock Holmes?" Holly turned to look at Lewis. "He's here, they must have been shooting at him!"

Sherlock went to move and she noticed that Molly was laying there below him on the floor, she remembered the woman from the other day in the morgue. Lewis was at her side with his gun lowered. "FBI, neither of you move," Lewis said.

Molly was staring back past him, over toward the door of the bathroom.

"What is it? Who's in there?" asked Lewis. The door was peppered with holes from the gunfire. "Who's in there?" Lewis demanded

Holly backed over to the door as Molly began to talk. "Th-there was this girl we found at the dock, these men had her and we rescued her…she said her name was Sophie," Molly said.

The door inched open as Holly touched it, the floor was covered in broken glass from the mirror carpeting the floor. Carefully, she stepped on the tips of her toes to avoid the glass and peer over into the tub. The young, brown haired girl was laying on her back in the tub with a bullet wound in her stomach. She was breathing slowly, her eyes glazed over.

"Lewis," Holly shouted. "It's that missing girl! She's been shot, quick dial nine-nine-nine," Holly said. She couldn't think of if she should tell Molly now, it wouldn't be easy to reveal that her long lost daughter had been shot. Sherlock was still wearing shoes and Lewis allowed him to come into the room and cover the girl up in the hotel blankets.

"This is our fault, we shouldn't have taken here with us. We should have just left her at a hospital or something when we found her, this wouldn't have happened then," Molly said in a panic.

Lewis was on the phone with emergency services and he handed the phone off to Molly. "Tell them what they need to know," he said. He stepped through the bathroom door to speak to Sherlock. "You're lucky we're not here to arrest you, or we'd be adding endangering a child and kidnapping to the list of mounting charges, Mister Holmes," Lewis moved forward and cuffed him. "Now come quietly and maybe we can get the help we need and you can get your name cleared."


	10. In Which All Hell Breaks Loose

Chapter Ten

Holly insisted on keeping Sherlock and Molly at the hospital while Sophie was in surgery. There was good news, the bullet had missed anything vital and was close enough to her back that they could dislodge it without the threat of hurting her further. But she had completely lost consciousness and Molly had freaked out, perhaps more than she should have being a morgue worker and a doctor.

It must have been different, seeing a dead person and seeing someone die. Actually Holly could kind of see the truth in it. She had seen her Gran dead at her funeral, but watching someone who was dying or might die was something altogether different. And though Sophie would live, it was always terrifying seeing someone get shot. There was a small waiting room near surgery that Lewis commandeered for to keep Molly and Sherlock in so that it wouldn't disrupt the general public.

Six chairs were gathered around the small room and a table covered in magazines and toy blocks was at the center of the area. In the corner just above the door there was a wall-mounted flat screen television that Lewis had also commandeered the remote to. He flipped vigorously through the channels.

"How many fucking BBCs are there?" Lewis asked.

"I think ten," Holly said.

Lewis continued to flip through the channels in silence. Holly watched Molly wondering if she should say something about the fact that it was her daughter in the other room laying on an operating table just inches from having cheated death. Even though she didn't know the truth, Molly seemed utterly distraught and somehow, somewhere deep down inside it seemed as if she might actually know.

Though it might only be subconsciously.

She figured she better say something, anything to break the tension. "Did you dye your hair since we last saw you?" asked Holly. The question was stupid and the answer blatantly obvious as her hair was read now.

"Yeah, it was Sherlock's idea—we were trying to avoid detection," said Molly.

"It suits you, I've never had the courage to dye my hair," Holly said. "Plain and brown since seventy-seven!" God was she really saying these things?

_Tell her, come on you git. Just tell her._

Sherlock sat, arms crossed and foot tapping lightly at the floor as the television stations surged past. "Aren't we wasting time waiting for this girl to get better?" Sherlock asked.

"That _girl_ got shot because of us," Molly said. "We could at least…show some respect."

"They have BET in England?" Lewis muttered a little too loud.

Sherlock glared over at Molly. "I don't see how we're expected to help the authorities in this case when we're sitting and waiting on someone whom we don't even know to get better when the girl could very well end up a cripple for the rest of her life. If there's a problem to be solved then let's have at it and let that be it but this is intolerable, insufferable—I'd rather rot in a cell than—"

He was cut off by Holly as she, without thinking, rambled out the thing that she had held inside since the moment that she found Molly and Sherlock. "Sophie is Molly's daughter…" the words rolled off her tongue in a jumble and she was done speaking before she ever even though that she shouldn't have said it.

Molly's hands twisted up against her stomach, knotting at her shirt nervously as her eyes went wide. "What are you—what are you talking about?" she asked.

Lewis had found some strange infomercial and seemed to be completely oblivious to what was happening in the rest of the room as he watched it intently. Sherlock stared Molly down, giving her the once over immediately and then stood to speak. "I think it's obvious that you know exactly what she's talking about, your sudden change in body language, your stiffened posture, the way in which your hands are working tirelessly at that shirt. This girl…did you somehow know who she was? No you couldn't have, but this has to be more than coincidence…"

Shoving a Hostess snake cake that he had produced from _somewhere_ into his mouth, Lewis spoke. "Someone else knew she was related to her, they just didn't know she didn't know," he said around a full mouth.

Molly lowered her head into her hands, her dyed-crimson hair dropping over and covering her face. She sniffled and shivered as if crying. "I didn't think—I was able to just block it out or something because since it happened no one ever mentioned it, no one knew and I moved and no one knew me so no one could say '_there she goes, there goes the little slag who got herself pregnant'_…" Molly began to cry, fully and openly.

There was the screech of a chair as Holly rushed to her side and hugged her tight. "Hey, it's okay," she said.

"I never forgot about her. A little person can't just _come out of you_ and you forget it, you know?"

Holly's hand was poised atop Molly's head and she rocked her in the chair slightly. Sherlock seemed as if he were actually shocked, which if he was anything like Mycroft, was a rare occasion. For a long while there was silence, Holly stood awkwardly next to Molly's chair and the television stayed muted as the advertisement played.

"She's just coming out of surgery," a doctor stepped into the doorway with the surgical mask down around his neck and nodded to them. "Things went just fine, it looks like she's going to be okay."

"Thank God," Holly said as she made the sign of the cross.

The doctor went to walk away. "It's going to be a little bit longer before you can come in and see her," he said.

It was strange, the sensation that Holly felt, but she couldn't tell if it was the passing horror that was ebbed away by the good news. Or if there was something else, often she didn't sleep at all anymore. But she dozed off as did the others. They sat in the waiting room, the four of them and slept soundly.

* * *

><p>John Watson couldn't sleep.<p>

It was half three in the morning and Sarah was curled up in and innocent manner against his side. Her nails were ever so lightly locked against his skin, she would stir from time to time. Her eyes flicking to either side beneath the lids and a slow sigh would escape. Though he watched her, he couldn't concentrate on her for long. Sherlock was out in the city alone, being hunted by the authorities and god knows what else.

There was something at the edge of his mind. He felt it there against him just as sure as he felt Sarah. It was something cold and ancient and evil—a putrid chill washed over his person and he finally shivered.

"John," Sarah said lightly. "We should go to bed, I don't think he's going to contact us tonight," she said.

He didn't answer for several seconds. "I—I might just take a short walk," Watson pulled away from her, thinking that it might somehow make the feeling abate. But just the contrary happened. The feeling engulfed him, wrapped its way around him and wouldn't let go.

"Please, I'm just…restless—I hate dreams it seems like no matter what I never sleep soundly when I have them, least of all nightmares this weird," Sarah said.

John extended his hand to her and pulled her up from the couch. "I'll make us some tea and be right in," he said patting her on the back and sending her along.

Sarah smiled back over her shoulder with that little, think half sort of smile she smiled. Just as she turned the corner into the hall to head to his room he hollered out to her. "What did you dream about?"

"It was the damndest thing, you know. I can't even remember," Sarah said.

"But you know it was bad?" asked Watson.

"Yeah—it was dark ominous kind of feeling, sometimes I wonder if dreams are anything more than just feelings," she said.

Watson snickered lightly, the feeling seemed to finally be washing away from him now. He prepared the tea and placed the items on a tray to carry them in to Sarah. By the time he reached her she was out cold and he lay down to drink his tea in peace. He didn't want to sleep, he didn't want to lay there and think about whatever it was he had been thinking of before. But then it crossed his mind…_what was Sarah thinking about?_

* * *

><p>Sherlock awoke in a room that glowed with the ashes and cinders of a dying world. Everything was on fire and rusted and there was a smell like thick fresh blood in the air. He coughed against the hot metallic air and pushed himself up. The heat was excruciating and it felt like his skin might rupture at any moment.<p>

Molly and the two FBI agents were gone, but the girl Sophie was laying near him, her hospital gown seared at the bottom ever so slightly. He called out to her, his voice raspy like he had been breathing in this smoky air for days. "Sophie. Sophie!" he said a little louder and harder the second time.

She stirred, her eyes opening slowly and she pushed herself up off the ground. The front of her clothing was ripped and bloody where it looked like bullets had gone through but she didn't appear to be bleeding currently or in pain. She was barefoot and stepped toward him slowly. "Where are we?" she said confused. Her eyes were watering and it could be easily said that she might not have been able to see the horror of what was around them.

The whole world was cooking and through the remains of this shanty structure they were in Sherlock could see the reddish-orange sky with sulfurous clouds skirting across it. He glanced to Sophie, trying to think of something to say to make all of this go over easier. If he was going to make it out of this with her in tow he needed to calm her and the girl had been through enough as it was. At that very moment, he couldn't be sure if it was just because of what the FBI agent Holly had told them or if Molly wasn't there—perhaps it was some combination of the two. But he could see all of Molly in Sophie. The long, semi-kept brown hair; that plain, though not ugly appearance; the way her mouth hung open a hair when she was confused.

For an instant he thought he didn't want to speak. He didn't know what this was and he didn't want to let her down or lie to her. And then he thought how unlike him that was. "Wait right there," he said before dashing up to a high point in the rubble. He tested its sturdiness with one foot and when he found it to be sure enough stepped up onto it making his way as high as he dared. Sherlock scanned the entire landscape looking in a complete circle around at their burning surroundings. Everything was painted in reds and oranges and here and there he could still see structures, some were mostly intact and there were burnt out remains in-between the lines of buildings. The crumbling pavement was easily enough to make out and that's when he stopped at something tall and thick on the horizon.

This was truly horrific to look at and though he couldn't tear his eyes away he couldn't bring himself to reveal what he had deduced to the girl. "Everything's going to be okay," he said.

"But where are we, it's so hot and…" Sophie stopped.

Of course! It made sense now, they had been in that room in the hospital and then this, it made sense. The soot and the dust was coming down like snow now, Sherlock walked back to Sophie and dried her eyes with a handkerchief form his pocket. He stooped down in front of her to look her in the eyes. She looked remarkably more like Molly now than before.

"We need to press on," he said.

"What's going on though?" Sophie asked.

Sherlock brushed the hair back from her tear stained face and looked her dead in the . He stooped down in front of her to look her in the eyes. She looked remarkably more like Molly now than before.

"We need to press on," he said.

"What's going on though?" Sophie asked.

Sherlock brushed the hair back from her tear stained face and looked her dead in the eyes. "You know how adults tell you everything is going to be okay but it's really not?"

"Yeah," she said.

He just gave her a knowing stare and was about to offer his hand out to her. But instead she catapulted herself against him and hugged him tight. For a moment he thought it might have been some more of Molly in her, the daughter pining after him too. _Now John would love to blog about that_.

But it was different. The hug was innocent. As innocent as a girl who'd just lost everything could be. And it was frightened. She cried openly against his shoulder and stayed locked against him until he was forced to hug her back. Sophie was crying as honestly and earnestly as one could and he didn't have a clever set of deductions to tell him what to do in this case. He didn't have any logical course of action for their situation and he didn't even have the faintest clue how they had both ended up in this Hellish landscape.

Off in the background the tower he had noticed earlier burned and he had his one clue as to what happened. Though much of the structure around the bailey had been consumed in the massive citywide conflagration he could tell where they were. They hadn't left—London was burning around them.


	11. In Which Molly's Had Enough

**Chapter Eleven**

London was ablaze, of that much Lewis was sure. The sky was a deep reddish orange hue that painted everything around him the color of rust. He had been here before, not to the city of London but to this other worldly place where the real world seemed turned inside out. There was a technical name for it, though had the others been there with him none of them but Holly would have believed it if he uttered it.

Hell.

The heat didn't shock him, but it was of a kind which no person would ever get used to. Everything he looked at rippled and wiggled with the waves rising up in the distance. Perspiration dotted his arms and brow, he could feel it soaking into his shirt and he was drenched in it. He climbed a pile of debris that had once been a building to get a better view.

As he crested the hill he could see a torrent of fire rising up in the distance and twirling into the sky, like the column of flame from the Exodus. He fingered the trigger guard on his gun, searching for intelligent movement in the distance.

"Nothing," he said.

Lewis turned his back to the damned vista and wiped the sweat from his face. A voice rang from somewhere far too close by. "Lewis!" he whirled around to see Holly and Molly scampering out of the smoldering remains of a concrete building. "Over here!"

He trotted back toward them. "So we're all here?"

"Where is here?" asked Molly.

"It looks like a nuclear bomb went off," Holly said.

Lewis stared back up at where he had been. "This is Hell, ladies—hope you packed a sundress," Lewis said in a low voice that was barely audible over the distant roar of the flames.

"Impossible, how could we be in Hell?" Molly asked, the worried expression on her face deepened.

"Usually, you die," he said. "But something isn't right about this, there's something different at play here." They traveled south, following Lewis for some time and all they found was emptiness. Every building they checked, every block they walked—there was no one. This version of London was vacant except for them.

Molly froze, her legs locking her in place and she looked up toward Lewis and Holly. "Are we dead, then? Is this how it ends?"

Lewis shook his head. "No, I don't die," he turned to face her. "There was something done to me a long time ago and every since then the one thing I've been unable to do was die. I just come down to Hell and get rerouted. But it typically doesn't take this long and its not like this. We're still dressed…we have what we had on us in the hospital waiting room," he said.

"Then what?" asked Holly.

"I don't know," Lewis said.

* * *

><p>"Mister Holmes?" Sophie called from behind him as they walked the burning landscape. "Mister Holmes? Where are we headed?"<p>

Sherlock glanced back at her, seeing the part of her that was Molly painted all over that young face. "There's water nearby—this heat will take it all out of us if we're not careful so it'll be important to find something to drink," he prayed that whatever had happened the Thames was still there.

Moments ago they had been in the hospital; actually moments ago Sophie had been in surgery. He couldn't deduce how the city had fallen into this state, but he hoped that there would be some clue soon. The level of destruction didn't fit any method or weapon that he could possibly wrap his mind around. He hadn't mentioned what he'd found to Sophie though she couldn't remain in the dark forever, he knew.

If the girl had her mother's intellect then she would know the layout of the city well enough to realize what was going on. Some little landmark, a sign or some favorite hangout—it would bring it all flooding back to her and she would see the truth of where they were. When she did, he would certainly like to have an answer for how they managed to get there.

"Sherlock," Molly called from somewhere in the distance. "Sherlock Holmes!" she was waving her arm but there was something wrong. It didn't take a genius such as himself to see it.

Molly Hooper was ambling her way toward them, nude.

He eyed Sophie. "No matter what happens next, do not interfere, don't even move…" he stalked across the hellish landscape toward Molly cautiously.

"Sherlock," she was touching herself now, trying to draw a reaction from him. She moved in such a way as to accentuate her body and even in this barren place her milky skin glowed. "Sherlock, what's the matter?"

"I could ask you the same, Doctor Hooper," he said keeping his gaze locked with hers and tried to remain formal. Something about this was wrong from the moment that he saw her.

This whole place, the fact that it was on fire, the fact that Sophie was up and walking around and with him—none of it seemed right.

She closed the distance between them in a flash. Faster than Sherlock could blink and before he knew it Sophie let out a short scream, more than likely from the shock. Molly pressed her nude body against him with an unnatural weight and her eyes shone fiercely.

Sherlock leaned back to avoid her but she followed, her mouth opening to kiss him as she had several times over the last few days. Only now there were cracks forming at the edges of her lips and spreading out all around her mouth. The shine in her eyes took on an inhuman, reddish light. She forced her body into his until she was pressed firmly into him and there was nothing between them and he felt that his clothes and skin might have actually been giving way and opening to let him inside.

_Let me in._

The voice in his head wasn't his own, the tone didn't belong to Molly. By the time he noticed how transfixed he was on her, how much of his attention she'd commanded he barely had it in him to throw his arms up and jostle her back.

His skin tingled beneath his clothes, sticky wet from where she had been ripped away. "Wrong…" he huffed in a panic, shocked by her and his own reaction. "This is all wrong—run Sophie, just run!" he broke for her and she turned and ran too. She was fast, her feet pounding against the burnt, cracking street. He was right behind her, following the girl as she twisted and turned through the rubble.

A sharp turn and another twist. Sherlock found himself having trouble keeping up until Sophie slid to a stop in a small clearing in the shadow of a fallen visage of a building, the young girl was staring up at the falling remains of the structure. "That's—the Tower of London," she spun following a line where the Thames should be to find a distant cylindrical structure, "And the London Eye. How is this…what's going on?" he could hear the tears in her voice.

"We have to keep running," Sherlock said tugging at her arm to bring her alone. But Molly, the thing that looked like Molly with its nude body glistening with sweat stood in front of them. How had she gotten there? How could she be so fast?

Then he found out. She just was. In a blink she was upon him and had knocked him to the ground with a hefty blow and by the time that he sat up to assess the situation she was pressing her hand into Sophie's body, digging into the spot where the gunshot should have been and forcing her fingers deeper and deeper in.

"I had hoped I wouldn't have to see you again—that you'd stay discarded like the trash you are," the tone was so cruel that he couldn't ever have imagined it coming from the shy, small Doctor that he knew. Her smile was twisted into a heartless smirk and he had to struggle against the pain just to stand.

"She doesn't know, whatever you are."

The thing in Molly's form turned to face him. "No matter," she pulled her blood soaked fingers from Sophie's wound as the young girl's face was distorted in sheer pain. She winced almost falling to the ground. "She'll learn the truth soon enough," Molly said licking the blood from her finger tips. "You know, I never get to dig inside of the live ones…"

Sherlock pushed off of the ground with what he hoped was enough vigor to reach Sophie's side and cradled the girl against his chest. "What are you?"

"Isn't she grand Sherlock," before he could even second guess his first instinct on who the voice was he spotted him coming around burning pile of rubble to Molly's right. Moriarty was just as Holmes would always remember him; the pristine suit and perfectly trimmed hair. The highlights of red, orange and yellow splashed across his silhouette from the flames seemed an eerie juxtaposition to the image in his head of James Moriarty stepping through the refracted pool-side light where they had first come face to face.

_He felt real, more real than the rest of this. None of it made sense except him. _

"I can hear that mind of yours, tick-tick-ticking away, Sherlock. Ever in thought," said Moriarty.

"The same could be said of you," Holmes replied.

Moriarty shook his head, glancing downward as if saddened to reveal what he was about to say. "Now as much as I admit your on genius, you spend _far_ too much of your time chasing my many shadows—why do you know how many of my cases have crossed your meticulous mind this past few months alone?" he left a small dramatic pause. "_Six_. And you were none the wiser."

Molly snuggled up to him, dragging her crotch slowly along the side of his hip. Sherlock eyed the pair of them, his eyes flowing over her and up to James's eyes. But he could feel the would be Molly staring back at him, biding him to look. He had ignored Sophie for so long that he felt the need to look down at her as she was clutching his arm. The girl looked to be on her last leg.

"You talk like you're so far ahead—but you couldn't have done all of this," Sherlock said.

"This?" Moriarty held his hands up as if he were presenting the burning London to them. "This was partially my work. Once again you're behind the times, Sherlock. I've stepped up in the world and picked up some far more ambitious partners," he took Molly's chin in his hand and she vanished into a wisp of smoke. "This power is too much for even you to deduce a way out of."

The sinister man held his hand out and a beam of light extended out and hit Sophie in the chest. She shook violently and there was blood running from her mouth, the wound on her chest was spilling out, bubbling with blood and other bodily fluids from deep inside of her chest. She let out a raspy breath, jostled by the pain and the whimpering rose to a full on cry.

A second cry filled the air, this one an anger driven growl. Sherlock glanced up to find the source of the sound, Sophie still jerking against his grasp. Molly Hooper, fully clothed was running from somewhere through the flaming piles with something held between her small, pale hands.

"Leave her alone!" Molly plunged the object (Sherlock could see now that it was one of the vertical bars from a wrought iron fence, now) through Moriarty's back so that it jutted up through his chest and caused him to flail wildly in a bid to reach the makeshift spear. The post had been jabbed into the perfect spot where it could punch through him with almost no trouble, of course Molly knew where to place it because her extensive experience looking at the dead.

Moriarty gasped and Molly stepped around between him and where Sherlock held Sophie. "Leave my fucking daughter alone," she drew the gun up from her own coat and Sherlock caught a glimpse of her hand, burned red. _That fence post had been red hot when she grabbed it._

Lewis and Holly were there in time to see Molly holding the gun on Moriarty's head and part of Sherlock's mind screamed—most of it screamed—for her to pull the trigger. _Do it. Kill him!_

The game wasn't fun anymore. Moriarty had raised the stakes to a level Sherlock didn't believe possible. Even if this wasn't real, even if this was some kind of trickery, it didn't sense and there were no clues to piece it together.

Then he didn't have to, the world around them wavered and began to fade. Molly must have had her eyes closed because she didn't seem to notice. She stood with the gun wobbling in her hands as they appeared back in the hospital waiting room. Lewis clicked the safety on the gun and snatched it away from Molly to conceal it against his body as a staff member walked by.

Moriarty was nowhere to be seen and Molly opened her eyes as confused as the rest of them. When she looked down at her hands and her eyes went wide, Sherlock knew what she had seen and he got the same sick feeling she must have had when he felt Sophie's blood on his hands. The girl was no where around and the warm, thick substance that had bubbled out of the girl was coagulating between his fingers.

* * *

><p>Molly was past crying at this point. Sherlock had wrapped her hands with medical gauze and some burn cream as they listened to Lewis's story with baited breath. She could even tell that the normally emotionally devoid Sherlock was shocked by the tale. Lewis didn't try and sugarcoat what he was saying.<p>

"What do you mean that you've been to Hell before?" asked Molly.

Holly leaned forward, her face completely serious. "We do this all of the time, hunting demons, chasing down artifacts. Most big governments have someone trained to handle things—Mycroft didn't seem too shocked when I brought it up to him," said Holly.

"It would figure you know my brother, he has a mind for surrounding himself with pretty, easily influenced young women," Sherlock quipped.

Molly couldn't get the thought of Sophie out of her head, had she really been there or had she been part of the illusion too. _Not that it was an illusion, we were in Hell._

Lewis sat in his chair examining a vending machine sandwich. "Isn't it funny that Hell doesn't really make me think twice but this sandwich—even I don't want it in my body," he dropped it back into its packaging. "Can't believe that I thought I was that hungry."

Sherlock seemed content to listen and let Molly do all of the questioning. "So you can't die—why, how is that?" Molly asked.

Lewis shrugged. "Someone wants me around for something important," he said thinking the better of his hunger and lifting the sandwich to take a bite.

Her hands burned beneath the wrappings and she balled them up on her skirt, the sore skin stretched and stung sending shivers up her arms. Even if the Sophie was fake it had been worth it, she surmised. Because Jim had been real and she had shown him what she was made of. Somehow she knew he was alive, despite her fatal blow she could feel it in her chest. Moriarty was reaching out to her and part of her wondered if his attentions were now equally set on her and Sherlock.

This latest move will have definitely gotten his attention. By the way Sherlock had touched her since then and the way he had looked at and after her, the way he regarded her. She could tell he had taken note.


	12. In Which There Is A Mycroft Blackout

**Chapter Twelve**

* * *

><p>Molly didn't want to think about the situation they were in any longer. The entire thing felt surreal, like she was trapped in a bad dream. Even as dreams went, this barely made sense. She was sitting in silence until the doctor emerged into the hallway and clambered up to the door to tell them that Sophie was awake now.<p>

Without missing a beat, Holly leaned forward and touched her on the shoulder. "Go in and see her, even if she doesn't know the truth. Even if she never knows," she said.

The thought of her daughter thinking all this time that she had a normal family and life only to have it snatched away was clawing at her insides. Molly wanted badly to tell the girl the truth about who she is, but there is something nagging at her insides about what that revelation could do. Would it only pile more confusion on the girl's already overflowing plate?

Sophie was alone now. No family to go home to and for a moment the thought of keeping the girl flashed through Molly's head. She saw her flat with the spare room made up like a teenage girl would have it and movie nights on the couch with just the two of them and for some reason Sherlock barging in to check on the child from time to time-even though he never said that's what it was, even though acted as if it was something to do with some unspecified case.

Molly nodded to Holly gently and followed the doctor down the hallway and through the double doors to the ward where they were keeping Sophie. The sound of breathing machines and the beat of heart monitors wafted from various rooms in the long hall and it seemed as if they were keeping Sophie as far away as possible out of some sense of making this walk all the more dramatic.

"Miss Hooper," said the doctor. "You're a doctor yourself, right?" he asked glancing down at her hands wrapped in bandages.

She nodded. "I work at Saint Barts in the morgue," Molly said.

"Then I won't need to tell you how lucky Sophie is or how close she came to death," the doctor said. "But we're pretty sure she's going to be perfectly fine," he added as if to comfort her.

When they reached the room the doctor silently slipped away as Molly stepped through the door. She smiled nervously at the girl as she went about straightening the edge of the bed spread and smoothing it down. Then she moved over to pick up one of the charts from next to the bed. It was mostly blank, everything went on tablet computers these days except important notes everyone needed to see. Still Molly looked it over to appear as if she was doing something.

"It's blank," Sophie said. "I mean they wrote one thing, but-are you even a doctor?" she asked.

Molly nodded lightly. "Been a while since I've been in this part of a hospital," Molly said. "I work the morgue mostly."

"Sounds scary," Sophie said.

For someone who had lost so much in the last twenty four hours she was holding it together much better than would be expected. Molly was proud of her daughter for that and she actually was sure that there would be no way Sophie would have turned out this way if she had raised her.

"You got your own room, that was good," Molly had no idea what to say to the girl, she paced around the bed straightening things up and just trying to appear busy, trying her best not to look into the girls face. It was hard, had it not been for the dyed red hair Sherlock had slapped on her she might have been the spitting image of the young girl in the bed.

Molly continued on, rambling. "When I was twelve, I had me tonsils out and it was horrible. I remember I had to be in a room with three other people and they were all so loud and one of them just moaned all night. I didn't get a wink of sleep…" she trailed off.

"Was it your longest?" asked Sophie.

"What?"

"The hospital stay? Was that your longest one?" Sophie said.

Taken off guard Molly sighed. "I'm-its complicated really," she said.

"Are you my mum?" Sophie asked plainly. "I remember…I don't know what it was. You and that Sherlock man and those other people were there. The whole city was on fire. I remember you mentioning it there, while I was in pain…everything's not unclear."

Instantly Molly began to cry, nodding her head to indicate that the answer to the question was yes. "I am, though I couldn't have kept you and you seemed to have turned out so much better for it."

Sophie sniffled and reached up to rub a tear away from her own eyes. "And Sherlock, he's my father right?"

This made Molly laugh, harder than she was crying, so hard that she stopped crying all together. "Children are the furthest thing from his mind," she said.

"But you're together with him, right?"

Molly shook her head. "He'd never have me. Your father is actually long gone as far as I know, that's for the better too. He wasn't a very good person," she said.

Sophie was barely able to speak now, her voice breaking on some of the consonants. "My father…wh-who was he?" she asked.

"This boy from a year ahead of me in school. Even before we knew about you he wanted nothing to do with me, said I had been a drunken mistake…" already Molly wondered what kind of person she must have seemed to be to her estranged daughter. Someone this weak willed and pathetic being your mum had to be a disappointment. "When you came about he urged me to…take other options."

Molly didn't know what she was being so truthful, though she could see from the gaze on Sophie's face that she understood. Then she said it. "I understand it, I understand why you had to give me up."

"If I was any kind of a real mother, you wouldn't have to," Molly said. She didn't know what this girl had left, but she just couldn't be a part of it.

"That place, the burning London, that was fake or some kind of dream? You seem to remember it and you knew what I meant, right?"

Molly lingered by the head of the bed. "I'm still trying to sort that part, the best explanation I've heard so far is that we slipped into Hell, not sure if I can accept that."

"If its true, how can we ever be safe again?" asked Sophie.

Leaning in suddenly, Molly hugged the girl. "We're working on that too."

* * *

><p>Sherlock thumbed through Lewis's phone and the file that had been turned into a miniature PDF for his reading. The evidence seemed odd until you considered what Sherlock had seen in the past several days. Lewis pointed to a picture of something on the screen, the item seemed to have to have no real use and Sherlock could find no way to describe the object that suited it.<p>

"Our walking dead man isn't the first one, there were two others and all of them had huge connections with a lot of money-all of them also funneled several million toward expeditions to find objects that the general public wouldn't even know existed," said Lewis.

Sherlock nodded. "Moriarty controlled these men through some sort of trickery and caused them to spend their money on this, only to end up dead and with the fabled object turned over to him? But what do these objects do?"

"Various things," Holly said. "But the problem is that with them gathered and under the control of one man it would make him a god."

"Immortality, control over elements and other things-he's picked up about a dozen or so items so far and there are expeditions that cropped up to find others in the last few weeks or so, all working under the same type of massive sudden funding and with far too much accuracy for an average scientific discovery," Lewis said.

"Insider trading. There's someone informing Moriarty where these things are," Sherlock said.

"Someone or something," Lewis said.

"Why don't they just get them themselves? Moriarty has his own men and money and this informant must have some resources too," she said.

"Moriarty hates to get his hands dirty, plus I suspect that his collective of thugs and henchmen are ill equipped to deal with any sort of archeological undertaking," Sherlock said.

Lewis accepted his phone back from Sherlock. "Seeing that guy is like finding out the boogie man is real, there's files on him at the FBI but most of them don't have any sort of idea if he's real or even if the rumors of him are real. We've never devoted any man power to looking for him because he's a phantom."

"He makes sure his hands always stay clean, even if you had apprehended him I doubt you could have actually made any charges stick," Sherlock said.

"You don't bring a man like that in for questioning and court, you kill them," Lewis said. "It's the only way, he's far too dangerous to let run loose."

Sherlock's jaw hardened and he looked from Lewis to Holly. "Do you think he could be dead after what Molly did?"

"The item for immortality is already in his hands, we're going to have to take special means to kill him or get that item from him if we're to do it now," Lewis said.

"Then we have to make plans to do one of those two things," Sherlock said.

"My guess is Molly will want to stay here with Sophie?" said Lewis.

Holly shook her head. "Molly has more reason than ever for wanting to see this though. Moriarty being around isn't going to mean everything is all fun and safety for her and Sophie."

Sherlock spoke again. "Molly has been particularly useful, surprisingly so. Plus she's the only person known to have maintained close contact to Moriarty for a long period of time and have survived," he said.

"Then we need to have someone watch that girl, someone we can trust hasn't been compromised," Lewis said.

"Sister Marycatherine, she's a nun from the church I used to go to when I lived here," Holly said. "She would be happy to look after her," she said.

Sherlock glanced down at the clock on his phone, he wanted to keep Watson in place where he was but this precaution might be needed. "Are many nuns up when its closing in on four in the morning?" he asked.

"She'll do it, trust me," Holly said.

"Then you handle that," Sherlock said. "I'll go and collect Molly."

* * *

><p>Rest.<p>

At least it was true, Sophie needed her rest. She had been shot just hours ago and there was no quick way to recover from several ounces of metal tearing through parts of your body. But rest wasn't the reason Molly left. Every time Sophie asked her a question the answer was telling how weak willed she was.

The poor girl must have been embarrassed for her and Molly knew how she felt. She barely got halfway back to the door before she dropped to sit in a little cropped out part of the wall where something large must have once rested, perhaps a bank of fizzy drink machines.

Mere seconds after she had plopped down there was no way around it, the tears just flowed out and she couldn't help it. Her stifled breaths shuddered out of her as she tried to remember how any of this had happened. This new problem wasn't anything to do with Sherlock and his being in her life and it hadn't been visited on her by Jim, either. Molly had been through a lot lately but she was blameless in all of it. If there had been one thing that everyone had always said following the Jim incident was that she was the victim, the innocent one. She had hated those things before, hated the way they had seen her.

But now she felt more guilty than she had since the day that tiny baby girl growing inside of her had been discovered. The reality of bringing a new life into the world was far worse than the mean things her mother called her or the disappointed look her father had when he found out his princess wasn't just a little girl anymore. She would give anything to make Sophie right, make her feel safe, give her back what she had.

_What she had was peace of mind_.

Molly pulled her legs up to her chest and let her head rest against her knees as she sobbed. A few people walked by, she could hear them but she didn't care. And crying wasn't something extraordinary to see in a hospital. No one would know what she was guilty of at least, they'd take pity-though it was false. They'd walk by and think she had lost someone dear to her or received horrible news.

Then a pair of footsteps came to a stop in front of her and she glanced up through bloodshot brown eyes to see Him standing there looking down at her. She wanted so badly to blame Sherlock Holmes for this, everything near that man gets destroyed eventually.

_Everything burns_.

"Why are you crying?" Sherlock asked.

The question seemed sincere, like he didn't understand and that might have been a first. Molly Hooper had stomped Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock bulged his way in next to her to sit against the wall with her, his arm went around her shoulders. "My guess is you want me to ask, because I honestly don't understand it," he said.

_This was probably the second most amazing thing she'd seen all day, the first being Hell of course. _

"Sophie…she's alone and the only person who should be looking after her is a pathetic, insignificant thing," she said. Sherlock looked at her knowingly.

"After what you did back there? Rushing Moriarty with a burning piece of iron to skewer him on it-does that sound like the actions of someone who was pathetic?" Sherlock asked.

The burning in her hands had subsided and she had almost let it slip from her mind. But Sherlock had a point and here he was trying to do what felt like comforting her. "Thank you, Sherlock," she said.

He got to his feet, dusting himself off and reached down to help her up. "There is one more thing I need to see," he said.

Molly had to be careful in how she grabbed his hand because pulling against the burns sent ripples of pain up her arms, as if it had suddenly come back with his mentioning. When she was on her feet he looked her over and smoothed her hair back into place and stared down into her eyes. Sherlock wrapped his hands around her arms, just above the elbow and pushed her back to the wall so that she was pressed firmly into the dimly lit space.

She let out an exasperated gasp in shock and his hand snaked around her hip just before he collided with her. The kiss had come with the utter shock and disgust at herself for not realizing what was happening sooner. He held her in place and she stood frozen for a long time before starting to return the affection, then from some place inside of her, some place she thought long forgotten a small sound escaped her. Though it might have been categorized as a moan inside she was squealing with joy. Molly lost herself in that kiss and she bit Sherlock lightly on the lip. He pulled away and she laughed lightly. "Sorry-what was all of that?"

"I bore easily," Sherlock said. "Though you think you're plain, there's something exciting about you Molly Hooper."

The way he spoke her name, she would have let him take her right then and there.

"When this is all over I'd like to explore this," Sherlock added.

"Are you asking me out?" she said. This was probably as close to asking someone out as Sherlock Holmes could get.

"Perhaps," he said. "We make a great team, you're not unskilled with deduction and I find you…very aesthetically pleasing."

_Had he just called her beautiful?_

Molly pushed him away. "That's the last straw…"

"Did I do something wrong?" asked Sherlock, he glanced down into her eyes. "No…"

"No you didn't," Molly grabbed him by the arm. "You're coming with me, I can only take so much before-well just mind my hands, they're still hurt."

"Alright," Sherlock stuttered.

Molly walked up the hall, away from Sophie's room. She didn't need to think her mum was a slut and Molly didn't feel like a slut. There are some instances, plenty of them actually where waiting does not make us better people. When she found an unoccupied room she slipped inside and locked the door, Sherlock stood in the near darkness with just the emergency lights near the floor that rimmed the wall lighting things as Molly blocked the door with a discarded hospital machine.

Lifting one of the oxygen tanks from the side of the machine, she rammed it into the camera in the corner of the room breaking it. "You'll have to excuse us, Mycroft," she said.

"Destroying hospital property?" Sherlock said.

"I've shot my way out of police car and stolen another car…they'll afford another," Molly said and she was upon Sherlock, dragging him back toward the bed and pressing her back into the plush top of the whole apparatus. She reached back to find the bed controls and lowered it enough to put her butt up on it and something in the back of her mind almost made her want to laugh. Sex in a hospital? It was like she was in one of those trashy drama shows. Though at six and a half thousand pounds, this would be the most expensive bed she'd ever had sex in.

"What are we doing?" asked Sherlock.

Molly smiled. "You're just about to get me out of these clothes," she said.

* * *

><p>Holly peered down the hall to see if she could find any sign of Molly or Sherlock. She had made her calls and they were ready to make their way out of here and try to get at Moriarty before he made his next move. Only thing was neither of the pair had returned and she was wondering if maybe they were hashing things out with Sophie or if there was something else personal going on there.<p>

She heard a metallic flick and turned to see Lewis lighting a cigarette, right in the middle of the hospital waiting room. He glared up at her. "What, we're alone?"

"Put it out."

"What are you, my fucking mom?" Lewis compiled despite his protest. "Just remember I'm older than you."

"Then you should bloody well know better," Holly said.


	13. In Which Cigars Are Smoked

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Author's Note: **Sorry for the tardiness. I'm still reeling from the last episode and very excited about the next. I have plans to try and rework and rewrite this into something more manageable and well rounded sometime in the future, but I want to finish it first. When I do rework it, I might do so while getting it closer to cannon.

* * *

><p>She's apprehensive as told by her rapid breaths and the slightly quickened pace of her heart. There's something distracting and comforting in the weight of her head against his chest and he can't help but glance at her now and then, look down at her, worry and fret over her and its worse than he suspected it would be. This is the thing that he feared and worried would happen if he ever bothered to care. Here he was rushing through the darkened London streets in the back of a cab with Molly Hooper leaning against his chest and wondering over everything that could go wrong with meeting with Moriarty like this.<p>

The light from the street lamps filtered down through the tinted glass and passed over all of them. He examined the cabbie's hand, the cut of his jaw, the clothes he wore-the _Study in Pink_ as it had been dubbed made him suspicious. But the fact that he had someone dear to him and mostly defenseless made him worry. Molly shifted, not sleep, not daring to move too much because she knew Sherlock was watching her.

Somehow he could tell that she knew.

Molly and Holly were thing women, which afford him and Lewis to space to sit in the back seat with them without issue. Though words weren't passing between them, he could tell all that he needed to know about the situation. Lewis held to Holly's waist protectively and she seemed to be the only person in the car who's worry could have rivaled Molly's. Her green eyes seemed lost in thought and she only met his glance once as he looked in her direction.

Lewis was a different picture, he was ready for whatever it was. His hand was tucked into his coat where a fifty caliber pistol waited, clutched tight. He was right handed but for some reason tended to fire with his left. It was probably an issue of stability-some long forgotten injury. He had been in the military, the first Iraq war and contractor in the second, Sherlock sorted this out from a few quick things that had passed between them over the course of the night and he concentrated on pulling more visual clues from the man's person to substantiate this hypothesis.

This was how he kept busy and he wondered if he might be nervous. But that wasn't him, there was an excitement in the air. Moriarty had presented himself recently and embarrassed Sherlock in a moment of ignorance that Sherlock had let him have.

He had something to prove this time.

Molly shifted again. Her hand finding his and she clutched for it.

Was all of this damnable contact so necessary? He felt suffocated, like he wanted to push her away. Though truthfully there was no room in the back of this small cab for such things. Besides he could only feel suffocated for a moment-because he was really scared, he was worried and he didn't want Molly here despite the fact that she insisted on being there for some reason.

He couldn't tell what use she would be. Molly's skills weren't lost on him, but she wasn't needed in situations such as this where there could be any manner of dangerous things going on. Molly was best suited in a lab, sometimes in goggles or hovering over a microscope and mixing chemicals. She was so good with chemicals.

"It's here," Holly leaned out from where she was wedged against Molly and pointed to where dank building stood, seemingly vacant on the corner. "This is the address that Mycroft gave us."

_She's said too much, if this cabbie is an associate of Moriarty's or_…Sherlock banished the thought and turned his attention to the building. It was constructed sometime in the 1970s and had seen heavy use until recently. He searched it for any signs of a watch, of guards or anything else of the sort. They disembarked from the taxi and Molly stepped away from him for the first time since Saint Bart's.

"This is it then?" Molly asked. "Seems anti-climatic," Lewis said.

Holly sighed. "Well _he's_ not in there, its just a go between but this is the person that he trusted the last artifact with, this will be our one chance," she said.

"If it just arrived in town tonight there's a safe bet that he wouldn't have had time to move it yet, Moriarty is moved to being impatient but not to the point of endangering his objectives," Sherlock said.

"What told you that?" asked Lewis.

"Because we're alike," Sherlock said.

He saw Molly's body tighten, ever so slightly but he could still see it.

Lewis nodded. "So tell me this, are we still having any illusions about moving on this guy without him knowing we're coming? Do we need to keep this stealthy?" asked Sherlock.

"He knows by now, obviously," Sherlock said.

"So we can do this noisy?" asked Lewis.

Sherlock nodded.

Lewis tossed the cabbie one hundred dollars in twenties. "You never saw us," he said as he pulled out his gun and approached the door. "This information is good, right Holls?"

"When Tony Blair talked about going to Iraq I remember Mycroft's exact words being…suit yourself," Holly said.

"Good," Lewis said.

Sherlock watched as Lewis put the door in and when he stepped inside of the building there were three rapid shots. Men were on guard, he couldn't have known that but he dispatched them all the same and he went in deeper with Holly behind him. There was one more gunshot and when they returned Lewis was reloading his gun with a fresh clip-he was doing this just in case. He was thorough.

"Building's clear," he said.

Molly and Sherlock followed him back in to where Holly stood over a man at a desk who had been shot in the shoulder. It was with a smaller caliber weapon, but he was bleeding badly. Though for the time being he could sit up. The other two men had been far less lucky. They were dead, shot in the face and draining into the plush, dingy carpet of the building.

Lewis walked over to a wall with shelves full of tools and trinkets and began to browse casually with his gun dangling from his hand at his side. Occasionally he would twirl it expertly. "He's all yours, Holmes," he said.

"Your employer, tell me where the item is he's had you collect?" Sherlock asked.

Molly's eyes were all over the room, she tried to avoid looking at the bodies. She still wasn't used to seeing them so fresh. The man in the chair leered forward an spit at her and Sherlock and it nearly hit her. Holly pushed him back down.

"You won't do anything, if I tell where it is, if I tell anything about him then-"

Lewis cut him off by imitating a game show buzzer sound. "Wrong answer, generic henchmen one," he grabbed something off of the wall in a flash, a small box of something metal and tiny that jangled together and…

…and in his other hand a hammer. He slammed into the man at the desk, pushing him back to the wall and sprawled the man's hand out flat. With one harsh motion he raised a nail and brought the hammer down into it pinning the man back to the wall. Sherlock could see that he did this in such a way that the man was up slightly too high so it would be slightly uncomfortable but look like an accident. At the same time he let the hammer slip and hit the man's index finger.

Then, and this surprised Sherlock, Lewis slapped the man hard in the face. He was already screaming, biting his tongue when this happened and his mouth filled with blood. Lewis dropped the hammer. "Maybe my friend here should repeat the question?" Lewis asked.

Sherlock said nothing.

Molly was clenching his hand now, her face buried in his shoulder.

Lewis pulled his gun out now. "Were you going to say that Moriarty would torture you?" he asked leveling the gun at him. "Good, I can match that. I'm not against doing all sorts of nasty things to get the information I want, a young girl got shot tonight and guess what? I don't like it when someone shoots innocent teenage girls-I'm also not fond of someone flinging me into Hell for fun and games, so if you'd like to live to see the end of the night you can tell me where the artifact is," Lewis said.

The man's eyes flicked to something and much like he had said before. When there's a fire, a mother always looks to her baby. It was on the desk and it looked barely like anything that anyone would have an interest in. Sherlock lifted it, a small stone which seemed to be a material that he had never seen nor heard of. It was a shifting prism of colors but had a consistency like gold with black spots that seemed to shift with the colors.

Sherlock pocketed it and glanced to Holly. She was across the room pretending she didn't see the mess of things Lewis was making. She was a posh one, all girls school until university and educated in the south. Her mother was Welsh and her father an atheist, all this he had figured over the course of the night. This mixture of things and more had made her into a right, proper lady. She had her qualms with Lewis's methods.

But as he touched the artifact in his pocket he couldn't help but think they were effective.

"Americans are so brutish," Sherlock said. "We've got what we need, Agent Reynolds let him down," he said.

Then, for the second time that night Lewis surprised Sherlock. He fired the gun right into the man's face, killing him. The gun shot made everyone jump, but Holly seemed more annoyed than anything else.

"Bless, Lewis we might have needed to question him more. What am I going to tell Mycroft?"

"Tell him its going to be a closed casket funeral," Lewis said. "We want Moriarty's attention, we've got it now. He can't stay hidden when we have his little rock thing and we're rubbing our nuts in his face so brazenly," Lewis said.

* * *

><p>Mycroft padded through the dank room of the building between the bodies and the spilled blood on the carpets. The three men in the front obviously hadn't expected someone to burst through the door waving a hand cannon and shooting them in the heads. But hardly anyone could be said to expect such things.<p>

The last man hung from the wall with a blood smear showing the path which head had taken on the way down, his hand was partially ripped by a small gauge nail that had been driven through it. Mycroft made a sound of disgust. "Sherlock, you could have let them leave us with someone to work with?" he said.

"To be honest I was surprised he shot him," Sherlock said.

Mycroft nodded. "Yes, well his service record says that he doesn't really have much against pulling a trigger when the need arises," he said.

Sherlock held the stone up, Molly was outside with Lewis and Holly, he could tell that Mycroft made her nervous-something about the way that he was looking at her. "This, any idea what it-"

Mycroft cut him off, "It's a Philosopher's Stone, one of the last genuine ones left on the planet probably and it has the power to make one user immortal or bring one user back from the brink of death," he sprouted off so fast that only Sherlock could have caught it all. Then he launched into his next sentence. "You've had sex with Molly Hooper, haven't you?"

Sherlock's face reddened.

"No point in even trying to hide it now," Mycroft said, he went in his jacket and pulled out a thin cigar and handed it to Sherlock. Then he stuck one in his own mouth. "Celebratory," he said as he lit Sherlock's. "I hope it was…good and whatnot."

They stood in silence smoking for a little while and when Sherlock's cheeks faded he asked. "Tempting, isn't it?"

Sherlock said nothing.

"Not the sex or cigar-the stone, living forever? The things one could see and the places they could go…" asked Mycroft.

"I bore so often that it'd be my greatest nightmare…boredom for eternity," Sherlock said.

Mycroft patted him on the shoulder. "Good to know you're not tempted," he said.

Sherlock plucked the cigar from his mouth and examined it. "This is…grape flavored?" he said.

"Stopped at an Ultramar-beggars can't be choosers, it's all they had," Mycroft said. "If you want to sit this one out, I can understand the need. We're setting up a drop to get Moriarty out into the open…"

"You're going to give it to him?" asked Sherlock.

"No, we're going to get him to give us the rest of the artifacts…" Mycroft said. "We have his accounts, or some of them located and we're working to freeze them, illegal as it might be," he said.

A text vibrated Sherlock's phone and he instantly knew it had to be from Moriarty. He lifted the phone out of his pocket and flicked the screen lock off.

Sophie. Philosopher's Stone. Full Circle.

M

**Author's Note: **This was Molly light, I kind of wanted to do that because I felt like I hadn't given enough time to Sherlock and his thoughts and I'm trying to get more confident writing him. Next chapter is pretty much going to be the last, more than likely.


	14. In Which Someone Finds Their Courage

**Chapter Fourteen **

* * *

><p>They climbed out of the car a few blocks back, the four of them making their way through the darkened streets to the place where Moriarty and Sherlock began. Fate seemed to link them to this place, to Carl Powers and now Molly Hooper had been dragged into the mix. But Moriarty wouldn't let them walk up unanswered.<p>

When the shooting started Sherlock rushed Molly into an alleyway. The bursts of gunfire filled the street and Lewis was behind a car returning fire. Mycroft had allowed them a bit more fire power for this, or rather he'd given it to them as they asked. Still Moriarty was determined to turn this street into a warzone.

"I know another way," Sherlock told them and that was when he saw Holly. There was a bloody wound on her shoulder, she'd been grazed by one of the bullets and had sheltered against one of the walls for protection. She was just at the mouth of the alley and Molly ran back to her, tearing at part of her own skirt to wrap the wound.

"You'll be fine," Molly said over the gunfire.

Holly smiled. "I know, don't worry," she took Molly with her good arm, "we need to hurry."

Lewis dashed the distance into the alley and they were following Sherlock through a building that seemed to be abandoned. There was an explosion of muzzle fire and Sherlock dropped back to cover against the wall. Rows of bullets ripped into the wall behind him. Holly and Lewis returned fire and Sherlock led Molly through the darkness with the flash of the guns to light their way through the building. The place was burned out and dank and wet with rain water. There might have been something romantic in the setting under different circumstances but with tracers from the guns of Moriarty's men whizzing past them as they ran it had little luster.

* * *

><p>Lewis bottlenecked the men into a hallway as he brought up the rear with Holly right in front of him. He had switched to the AA-12 not, it was louder and much more destructive but any worry about damage to the aesthetics of the building had gone out the window by now. The shooting was sure to attract the attention of the police but Mycroft had warned them about this and expected it, he would try to keep any interruption to the attempt to get Sophie back to a minimum.<p>

Two men dropped in a row as Lewis pumped shotgun rounds into them and dropped back to avoid a spray of machine gun bullets. How many were there? Maybe they had underestimated the strength of Moriarty's force. Lewis didn't think one man could have had this much pull for any non nationally funded group. He would pass the information along to Sherlock: but the idea that Moriarty was operating without some backing from somewhere else was absurd when he considered it now.

The weapons were a vast assortment of makes and models, expensive and seemingly well maintained. Lewis felt they might even be a little outgunned in this endeavor. He backed down the hall putting down a few suppression shots from his side arm on the bend of the hall before switching back to his shotgun.

Sherlock led them out into an alleyway, it was raining now and he led them up to a blue door with a metal push bar in its center. "It's through here," he said. Molly hung close to him, her fingers knotted in nervousness. Lewis watched the two of them for a moment as Sherlock surveyed the room just on the other side of the door.

They pushed through into a darkened rec-center. "The pool is at the far end," said Sherlock.

"Will he have anyone in the building to stop you?" asked Holly.

"No, he wants me to get there," Sherlock said.

"Maybe we should get you somewhere safe," Lewis said to Molly.

She shook her head. "I'm going, he has my daughter," she added to give the statement weight..

Lewis nodded. "Its settled then, Holly and I will hold up here and hold them off, I'm sure we'll be able to buy you enough time."

* * *

><p>Sherlock didn't want to introduce any unnecessary elements of unpredictability into the equation; even if he was good at sensing what someone might do he didn't need to leave any room for error. He offered Molly his hand and the two of them walked through the building together and without the aid of Lewis and Holly. Her pulse was elevated and her breathing rapid, the cadence of it distracting and reminding him of earlier in the night with her in that bedroom.<p>

There was so much at stake here, he couldn't play it fast and loose like he had before and he couldn't goad Moriarty with death like he had when it was John with him. He didn't want to play with Molly or Sophie's lives and that was the advantage Moriarty would have. In truth, he didn't know what he planned to do.

He psyched himself up for what would happen when they reached those doors and walked out into that pool area, but he was just drawing a blank. The sound of gunshots died off in the background muffled by the walls as they moved deeper and deeper into the building. He and Molly were silent for most of the walk. She must have sensed his tension, sensed the rise of the electricity in the air as they neared the final door.

She tugged his hand until he was facing her, those big brown eyes wide with anxiety and fear. Molly was biting her lip in a nervous manner and she mussed up his hair with her dainty hands. Something about the motion had a strange effect on him and Sherlock wanted to hold her, if he could have just done that and not opened the door he would have. Then she kissed him lightly on the lips. "Whatever happens here, I'll always love you, Sherlock Holmes," she grabbed his jacket and the kiss deepened.

But those words, those eyes, and just…_everything about her. _He knew what he had to do. Sherlock moved fast, much faster than she had probably ever seen and he was behind her. He was careful to be as gentle as he could, a blood choke required less strength and therefore wouldn't hurt as much.

Molly's struggles tapered off as the blood to her brain was cut off. He could see her eyes begin to sag in the mirror as she mouthed his name and finally went limp. He laid her down softly on a bench and used a clean towel to cushion her head.

He pushed through that final door to the pool. The pool looked the same as it had before, of course there had been no damage in their last trip. No shots fired, the bomb never detonated. Moriarty was at the far end of the pool with Sophie grasped in front of him a knife at her throat. A deep throaty laugh rippled through the room as he spotted Sherlock.

"That a boy, you came alone and no gun this time?" Moriarty said. A smile crept over his lips.

"It hardly helped me last time," Sherlock said trying to keep as much of the emotion and rage out of his face as he could. There was something overbearing about this, he liked an adventure, craved them. But this wasn't fun anymore.

This hadn't been fun in a long while.

"Where's your better half? Taking a little nap?" asked Moriarty.

"It seems you've caught the play by play," Sherlock said.

Moriarty shrugged. "Well, I like to stay well informed. Took my lessons from Mycroft," he said. Sophie wiggled in his grasp a little and he moved up her neck, threatening.

Sherlock sighed, trying to keep calm. "Don't you tire of this game? Tire of me and this back and forth and it getting us nowhere?" asked Sherlock.

"Awe, bless. But no," Moriarty said. "But you know, I can tell you a thing or two about Molly and choking," he glanced to Sophie. "I'd tell you to cover your ears but I don't think you have any allusions to your mother being loose given the fact that you're here," then he looked at Sherlock. "She loved a good choke, couldn't come without them sometimes…"

He ignored the comments, Moriarty had to know that it took more than this to get to him. He had to have at least that much faith in Sherlock's abilities. "Molly's not here, if you want to truly test your prowess over me why not face me without these obstacles and go betweens and pawns," Sherlock said.

"That's right, pawns, that's exactly what they are. Which further begs the question why you care about them," Moriarty said."Is it because one of them lives with you and one's your brother? Or because one of them opened her legs and let you in and this one," he rocked Sophie from side to side, "fell out. Not that she's even your child…you only care because she's Molly's."

"Same as you, you only have her because she's Molly's and if you let her go and she walks out of here, what am I going to? Leave with her, we can have our game without the distractions, without everything else."

Moriarty's smile widened. "They're only distracting to you," he said. He moved the knife up and cut a shallow line in Sophie's cheek. "If you became stronger, if you lost that heart you'd have the same power I have. Not caring is better than any body armor, or weapon, or amount of money or other power one can have in this world. Though immortality is nice," he said.

"The stone then? Is that all it is?" asked Sherlock as he went into his pocket.

"That's part of it, but I still can't let you walk out of here," Moriarty said.

"You have a slim chance of walking out of here alive too, with the racket you've kept up outside how many police do you think are here now. You've gotten sloppy. What if the stone's a fake?" asked Sherlock.

"Then it's a good day to die," Moriarty said.

Sherlock wondered if he saw the expression, the realization. The stone was gone. He didn't know how, he searched his pocket up and down as he spoke but it wasn't there.

* * *

><p>Molly coughed, rolling on the floor and bracing herself against it as she struggled to regain the functions that Sherlock's actions had dampened. She had lucked out, he just hadn't been thorough. Molly was shocked that she was able to pretend to go limp long enough for him not to stop before she fully lost consciousness.<p>

She got to her feet and checked the pocket of her skirt, he hadn't noticed that either. It was right where she placed it. When she stepped in and kissed him, he had been lost in the moment to the point she was able to slip the stone out and into her own pocket. Could she have had that kind of power over Sherlock Holmes that his sense dulled?

Shrugging the thought off she knew what she was going to do, it was different because originally she had thought Sherlock was taking her in there with him. But no matter, her plan worked better without his element and from what she could figure. She placed the stone in her mouth and forced it up against her cheek and went into her coat to pull out the gun Sherlock had entrusted her with before.

When the final doors burst open and she stepped through them Sherlock and Moriarty stared in surprised. Sophie let out a suppressed squeal. "Mum," she wasn't used to that, she didn't think she would ever be, if this wasn't the last time. The Browning pistol was pressed to Molly's head and for some reason the confidence of holding this many of the cards at once spurred her on.

"Who's got the Philosopher Stone and a gun ready to blow her own brains out. Answer: Me. Now if you can't tell I'm a bit pissed and the last thing you want is a pissed off mother to deal with. Sherlock you're going to have to deal with me later, but Jim, sweetheart why don't you let Sophie go, I think she's far too young for this game," she said it all in one breath. For some reason she was mad with the heat of the moment and imitating Matt Smith…

Moriarty's eyes lit up with excitement. "This is a lavish development. I can see why Sherlock picked you."

"I picked him. Now let my daughter go or I swear I will blow my brains out-and I'm no expert but by your response I've _deduced _that this stone will activate the second I die seeing as how it's in my mouth…" her words were muffled by the stone but they understood her.

Sherlock stared at her visibly frustrated. "What do you think yourself to be doing?" he asked.

"Cleaning up a mess," she said. "I'm offering myself as a trade, let my daughter go out those back doors there and I'll be your will hostage or hand over the stone, you can use me forever your needs are, Jim," she said.

Sherlock looked puzzled, confused, betrayed. He turned his body to Molly and that was the mistake.

"Fine," Moriarty said. "Hope she can swim," he pushed her into the pool and in a flash threw the knife.

There was no sound as it buried itself in Sherlock's chest and he dropped back to the ground. Molly dropped the stone into her hand and ran for him, firing the gun at Moriarty. But there was one problem, shooting herself in the head would have been easy. She was a shit shot and it showed.

"Hold on Sherlock," she moved to use the stone, trying to figure out how best to do it when she noticed that the knife wound hadn't resulted in any blood. She ripped his shirt open to find a vest protecting his chest.

By the time that Molly turned her head Moriarty's fist was slamming into her at full force and she dropped to the pool side. Sherlock made a move to do something and with a flick of his hand Moriarty sent him sliding into the wall. Molly was crawling to her feet and he punched her again. "And stay down, bitch," he laughed. "Do you think I would have come in here with a bloody knife without magic powers," he held his hands up. "This is why I've been I've been getting these artifacts. Do you have any idea how fucking cool magic is?"

Molly sobbed and held her face, she could see Sophie in the water moving about in her bindings, she had managed to move to the shallow end and lie down. Moriarty gathered the stone up from where she had dropped it and was lording over her.

Then Molly felt her phone vibrate between her breasts where she's stowed it. "And do you really think a woman with a doctorate is stupid enough to rush into this situation without ample back up?"

The doors behind Moriarty burst open and Mycroft and Watson where there with guns drawn. Before Moriarty could move his hands to use that magic he was riddled with bullets. They ripped into his body and Molly could feel the blood splatter around her as he was shot. It seemed to last forever and before he dropped to his knees and then over onto his side. The Philosopher's Stone tumbled into the pool out of his hand.

By the time Molly climbed to her feet they were helping Sophie out of the pool, she ran to the girl and hugged her. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Sherlock joined them, pulling the knife from his vest and John glanced at him. "Christ, mate, you look like shit."

"I could look worse, we're lucky that Moriarty also throws like a queen," Sherlock remarked.

Lewis and Holly came in behind them and everyone got a little start, before they burst out laughing in unison. They eyed Moriarty's broken form on the ground, Molly letting her head come to a rest on Sherlock's chest.

That was when she spotted it, a small red dot of light. She mouthed the words before she even heard them come out. "No," and was shoving him aside, not to block the bullet but to get him out of the way. The vest might not be enough if it was high powered, Moriarty had probably known about the vest…

There was a jerk of pain, hot and piercing and she crumpled before she could think about what had happened. It burned so much but there was numbness creeping over her. She could hear Sherlock shouting, the others were muffled around him. Cries of panic and there was a wetness running down the sides of her body and chest.

Someone was firing a gun nearby firing back. Everything blurred around her in a swirl and she just couldn't reason what was going on. It didn't make sense. This wasn't how she should have ended…

Sherlock was over her, his hands were moving over the wound and she could still recognize that touch. He was screaming at her, begging her to hold on.

* * *

><p>"Where's the stone!" Sherlock yelled again, he was covered in blood and cradling Molly's head. "Find it, we have to find it!"<p>

"What stone?" asked John. "I don't even know what the Hell we're looking for…"

Holly walked to the pools edge. "Everyone shut the Hell up, please…" she said before she looked to Lewis. "I'm going to try this, it's not something I've managed before," she said.

"Be careful," Lewis kissed her face. "Please."

Holly dropped to her knees next to the pool and scooped up some water. But the most curious thing happened. It didn't fall apart or run out of her hand, it stayed in a perfect sphere. As Sherlock, John and Moriarty watched she carried the water back to where Molly lay and dropped next to the body. She extended the water down into Molly's body and extracted the bullet and a small bit of the blood.

The bullet dropped out onto the floor and she grimaced. "Now's the hard part," she put her hands on Molly's chest, letting the water spread like a flat sheet over the wound, it rippled and sparkled on Molly's skin. Holly concentrated until her face turned read and she seemed to be in pain. She let out an exasperated gasp and in the same moment Molly's wound kneaded back together and she sat upright breathing heavily.

Lewis caught Holly around the shoulders and held her up. She was breathing deeply and glanced around at the surprise on the faces of the others. "Did I mention I'm part Angel?" she let out a tired, little laugh.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> _There's still more to come, just an epilogue but still._


	15. In Which Loose Ends Are Tied Up

**Chapter Fifteen**

* * *

><p>Sherlock sat in the back of the ambulance while they looked him over. No doubt that he had noticed that the wound on Holly's arm was gone, she had healed it away the same as she had brought her back. And as little as Molly liked to admit, what they had just been through didn't make all that much sense but it was good to see something good had come from all of this, she had Sophie in her life. Mycroft would try and get it worked so Sophie could stay with her and she had Sherlock, whom she never thought she'd have.<p>

Lewis had been injured too, though and because Holly had run herself low on energy with that one stunt, he had to undergo regular medical treatment. Sherlock pushed one of the paramedics away. "Take your time getting to me, I need it less, look after him first."

"I'm fine, trust me," Lewis said. "I've had a lot worse."

"Same here, really."

Holly sighed. "Oh come off it. It's bloody good that you two don't have to ride to the hospital I in the back of that thing, I don't think it could hold the two of you and your egos," she said.

Molly, Sophie and John laughed. "So that's case closed then," said John. "I guess this one won't be going on the blog."

"You could put it there if you wanted to, people would just think you'd gone mad," Lewis said. "How did you even know when to come out, Doctor Watson?" asked Lewis.

"I texted him right before I came into the pool area, I knew he was close at hand and Mycroft and he came up immediately when he got there," Molly said.

Sally Donavan was there and as she passed by the crew she shook her head. "Awe look, its Freak and company…"

"You could be a little politer to him or just walk the Hell by without saying anything," Molly snapped.

Sally sighed. "There's a Mrs. Freak now too?" she shook her head. "Well it looks like your observations were wrong, we didn't find any stone in that pool or even a body up there, just a fair bit of blood…whoever left it sure isn't going anywhere soon," she said.

Everyone froze and the grim news sunk in. Lewis was the first to move and he was barking orders at the police, trying to get them to move quicker, to canvas the area and start a search but it was really too late. The look on Sherlock's face told her that.

* * *

><p>Sherlock cursed inside his head. He knew what had happened and in the next few moments his suspicions were confirmed. Lestrade received a call about a SWAT vehicle being ambushed and attacked, the men who had responded to them up in the pool after Moriarty went down weren't SWAT but his own men, they had taken the stone and the body and slipped out.<p>

He had wanted to be rid of Moriarty, but that would have to wait for another day. He smiled despite the sad revelation. He had won though, he had Molly's love and they'd saved Sophie and at least hindered Moriarty. That was the important thing.


End file.
